


THE STEPS AND THE SHORE

by spicyshimmy



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Game(s), Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:44:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 54,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Shepard died the first time, Cerberus specialists implanted a graybox in his brain—and, when it was destroyed by the blast on the Citadel, his memories of the year since his resurrection were destroyed along with it. Kaidan keeps his distance in order to keep Shepard from feeling trapped by the implications of a relationship he doesn’t even remember, trying to rebuild the Citadel while Shepard tries to rebuild what might still be between them. Written for the Mass Effect Big Bang 2012. <i>It also wasn’t the first time he’d held onto hope that Shepard wasn’t dead.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to my wonderful beta, [bioticbootyshaker](http://bioticbootyshaker.tumblr.com); the idea-bringer for this fic, [ethe-real-ity](http://ethe-real-ity.tumblr.com); and the incredible artist I was paired with for the Mass Effect Big Bang, [stonelions](http://stonelions.tumblr.com).

> “There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again.”  
>                                                                       ― W.H. Auden

Kaidan waited in the decontamination chamber when what he wanted to be doing—maybe what he should’ve been doing—was getting to Shepard’s side as fast as his legs would carry him. He had a room number for the war hero and everything, and doctors had cleared him for visitors, along with the usual warnings and the usual preparations.

But it wasn’t Kaidan’s first time in the ICU, whether he was brought in flat on his back or there to see somebody else who had been.

It also wasn’t the first time he’d held onto hope that Shepard wasn’t dead. But when it was a matter of weeks instead of years—when it was a matter of saying _I love you, too_ and actually believing, as torn up as you were, that you could feel the heat from a guy’s palm through his glove on your cheek—it was a whole lot easier to put the grief behind you, that bitter voice that twisted like an omni-blade sinking in. Through Kevlar. Between the ribs. Coming at you from behind. The most effective ambush there was and if one time was a mistake Kaidan couldn’t afford, the second time was starting to look something like a habit.

It’d been two and a half weeks before Shepard was pulled out of the rubble on the Citadel—not by Kaidan, but thanks to the hard work of an emergency evac squad. Kaidan might’ve signed up for it, but Admiral Hackett said there was no damn way he was being assigned to that one because he was too damn invested.

_Too damn invested_. With Shepard missing and relays sizzling and earth practically razed to rubble from London to Dubai to Vancouver to New York City, Kaidan supposed he could see how _invested_ might be a bad thing.

All he knew was that he was the only person who’d know how to dig and how to keep digging, a set of stupid motions, no better than a machine—until his hands bled inside the fingers of his gloves, cutting the standard-issue polymer weave to pieces grip-first on rubble without needing a break.

Yeah. Admiral Hackett was right. Kaidan was too damn invested and so he got the R and R he didn’t want, the R and R he’d need. He kept his omni-tool on and Liara kept him up to date on what he was missing, and he knew from the other patients in his ward—one that didn’t have a ceiling—that he was lucky.

‘How are you feeling, Major?’ Liara asked.

‘I’m feeling lucky,’ Kaidan always replied.

Luck was like that; tricky, and relative to the soldier on either side of you. It didn’t exist in a vacuum, in an airlock or anti-gravity conditions, passing through deep space without comparison to lend it some fuel.

Kaidan closed his eyes. He felt his skin tingle before some of the newer scars thought about whether or not they wanted to sting. They didn’t. They were dead nerve endings—dead ends, period. Kaidan kept his eyes closed until the valves stopped hissing and he heard the airlock release.

Cleared to go. Kaidan followed the salarian medic past plastic curtains and containment chambers and spent a long, long time staring at Shepard through one of them. The wrinkles in the material distorted his face, clouded his features, but Kaidan knew it was him. It was thanks to comparison with a memory, sure, but he put his bare hand against the half-translucent tarp and the salarian coughed, once. Kaidan could actually make out an _ahem_ over the sound of the machines that were keeping Shepard breathing.

‘I saw him today,’ Kaidan said, voice bouncing off the omni-tool. There was some static—everyone was using the transmission frequencies these days—but honestly he was more surprised at how steady he sounded, how even, the same external rhythm pumping out steady time as they did in the ICU. ‘They’re gonna… They’re processing that request I sent in to stay with him, now that they’ve got him stabilized. You… You think I’m doing the right thing, Liara?’

‘No one ever knows that,’ Liara replied. Kaidan listened to hear if she was tired, or as messed up, as shredded as he felt, but she was like she always was. That might’ve been what it meant, what it _really_ meant, to be an asari. ‘Are you doing what feels right?’

‘Nothing feels right,’ Kaidan admitted.

‘It will,’ Liara said. ‘But I can’t say that it won’t take time.’

They had time now. The other conditions had been in place when there wasn’t and those had been replaced once there was. Knowing how to wait didn’t mean he was going to be any good at it.

Kaidan reminded himself of that before he slept—in the outpatient facility next to the field hospital, the sounds of emergency sirens loud enough to get into his dreams but familiar enough not to wake him up out of them. He checked his private messages too early in the morning for an official response on that petition and he thought about what he’d say to Shepard when he could.

_Good to see you couldn’t take care of all that red tape while you were taking care of everything else._

_Reapers—sometimes it feels like they’re easier than politicians, doesn’t it?_

_I almost thought I wouldn’t be able to forgive you for leaving me behind again, Shepard, but it looks like I was wrong about that, too._

_I was wrong about a lot of things, so I guess that makes us even._

He put his head in his hands for a while. It didn’t last. When he was finished, after only a short pause between lying down and getting up, he ate his morning rations, then headed over to the field hospital to help out. They could always use an extra pair of hands down there and since he wasn’t cleared for extraction duty yet—still waiting for the final okay from a medic, even a volunteer, to turn the red light to green on somebody’s datapad—he was just a soldier who wasn’t hurt bad enough to be laid up, a Spectre without a galaxy to look after. It was just people in front of him, bandages that needed placing, hands that needed holding, supply lists that needed checking. Orders, too; there was always room for orders. Structure, organization, and especially triage.

‘You know what Garrus would do,’ Kaidan said, staring down at the glow of his omni-tool while all the lights in the city dimmed and darkened. ‘He’d storm in there like a renegade and take the room by force if he had to. I can just see him—using cots for a barricade, oxygen tanks, med kits, you name it. They’d have to— They’d have to go through hostage negotiations every time Shepard needed a checkup.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Liara replied, ‘and this is the one thing I _have_ learned during my time on the Normandy… Not everyone is Garrus Vakarian.’

‘No kidding.’ Kaidan rubbed his face, the stubble that needed shaving but wouldn’t get it for a while yet. ‘I think that’s the only thing I’ve learned, too.’

But then, there were the other things. How Shepard liked to be kissed. How easy it was to get him to share the last few bites of a steak sandwich. What he looked like from behind when he wasn’t bowed over a railing, fresh off a transmission, quieter than a shadow—if a shadow could wear an N7 jacket without collapsing, that’d be him.

Somehow, Shepard’s bare back never had any of that darkness to it. Just muscle, freckles on the pale skin, each ridge in his spine and every knotted scar.

‘Did we lose the signal?’ Liara asked. Softly, gently, which Kaidan didn’t need anymore. He’d have clearance soon, a green light instead of a red one.

‘No. We’re good.’ Kaidan leaned back, staring at the view of the city from the blown-out window. He wasn’t too high up—most of the taller buildings had been the first to fall—but he could still see these dark outlines on the horizon.

It was always the horizon with them.

‘…Good as can be,’ Kaidan added.

‘Well, I’ll see what I can do,’ Liara said. ‘I might not be Garrus Vakarian and I’m afraid there won’t be any barricades made of oxygen tanks—they’re highly flammable; I doubt Garrus would put Shepard’s well-being in jeopardy like that, at least not while Shepard was unconscious—but…’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘Yeah.’

Some of the soldiers in the next room over were listening to a transistor radio, working hard on killing its batteries, playing a game of cards. Kaidan listened to them instead of the radio, their winning and losing hands—and in the morning he saw the same view, broken things framed by an empty window.

At noon, holding disinfectant and cotton down on an open wound, he got a new message. He didn’t check it until his hands were clean, pausing to unwrap lunch, which stuck between his molars while he tried to choke it down.

Clearance. Not the one he was waiting on from the doctors he’d been seeing. It was the other thing. He took the next mass shuttle to the hospital you needed a special ID to get into and snapped the one they’d made for him onto his chest, over a blue pocket.

‘And it’s a goddamn crime you weren’t in there before,’ Admiral Hackett said, looking about as tired as Kaidan wondered if he’d ever feel again. ‘Oversights happen, Major. You were a Spectre during the Invasion and you’re a Spectre _now_ , and Shepard needs somebody in his corner.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Kaidan replied. Hackett’s face kept flickering; those weren’t wrinkles under his eyes but sudden flashes of static. They were followed by shadow, then followed by light.

‘Trying to keep his location _relatively_ private’s been like defusing a damn minefield made up of frag grenades, too,’ Hackett added. ‘You just keep the whole thing quiet until he’s awake. He’s had all the visitors he needs right now, and Alliance has had all the extranet sensationalism _it_ needs. Like another blow to the head for a war hero, you understand me?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Kaidan fought the urge to salute; he couldn’t with his saluting arm still as stiff as it was, broken bones taking their time setting right. ‘I won’t let the commander down.’

‘No. I know you won’t, Alenko.’ Hackett paused. ‘Hackett out.’

Kaidan understood, better than he had even when he was the second human Spectre to Shepard’s first, why Shepard stood the way he did over a railing, figuring out its shape, and how long it’d hold while _he_ held on. Sometimes your fingers fit around something just right.

It was the same decontamination chamber, a different salarian to lead him to the room. No volunteer nurses here, no old soldiers with nothing better to do than help suture wounds. There was a chair waiting for him and everything and Kaidan pulled it away from the cot to sit. Then, he slid it in closer, moving quietly—like he thought Shepard was sleeping; like waking him would be a bad thing.

He needed his own R and R, same as anyone. Even if he didn’t seem to think so.

Kaidan cleared his throat. The salarian was checking something, beyond what Kaidan had learned in the field and in the field hospital, which had been nothing better than patching things up as a stop-gap to keep the blood from flowing. At least all the plastic tarp wasn’t up anymore between them and Kaidan rubbed his hands together, elbows on his thighs, knuckles between his knees.

‘Red tape,’ Kaidan said. His voice sounded hoarse, like it had back in London. It’d been nighttime then and far from clean, Kaidan just waiting for Shepard’s armor to darken with gut-spatters, for pieces to start going missing one by one. ‘I would’ve been here sooner but chances are I wouldn’t have been the best company for anyone. Not even a guy in a medically induced coma. You just… You can’t stay out of trouble when it comes to the Citadel, can you? Always almost…’

Kaidan listened to his voice break. ‘Okay,’ he said, once it’d scattered and regrouped. ‘We can talk about something else.’

*


	2. II

Six days later—too long, but still not quantified in a measure of weeks—Shepard woke up.

Kaidan, on the other hand, was asleep, his cheek on his forearm, smelling like hospital as much as he smelled like sweat. There was water, filtered and as clean as you could get anywhere these days, and that kept him hydrated, while the same thing could be said for Shepard and the tubes pumping into his wrists, his chest. The silence that wasn’t quiet at all, punctuated by beeps and timers Kaidan learned to sleep through or not, depending.

The pain in his shoulders was there with him even in his dreams—which weren’t about anything so much as they were restless. He couldn’t meet Shepard again in any of them because that had already happened outside of dreaming, and it wasn’t a reunion they’d use in all the news outlets to show just how good it could be to welcome your hero, the soldier you loved, back home from the fronts.

If you were one of the lucky ones.         

Kaidan slept through the beeping but not through the hand on his shoulder, gripping clean through the pain. Then, he was awake, shuffled out of the room, chaos organized into well-contained chambers and a bunch of medics filing into one of them.

There were different kinds of waiting and Kaidan had lived them all. The quiet kind that might never end—that was the worst. The waiting that followed a sudden change and no new information was pretty bad, too, but Kaidan sat back and stared at the door and couldn’t make himself listen, or try to overhear what was going on inside and just out of his reach.

Everything was happening but it was happening somewhere else. Kaidan held one hand in the other and that was all he could expect for the time being, not praying, not looking to anyone but the code-pad on the door in front of him.

Just waiting, like he’d been doing for years now. Shifts in the _how_ instead of in the _what_ or the _who for_.

It might’ve been a few hours later, long enough that Kaidan had lost feeling in certain places because of the long, hard bench in the hall, when Garrus showed up. He cast a long shadow and told Kaidan, ‘You look like hell. And before you tell me this _is_ hell—it isn’t. It’s barely even purgatory.’

‘Yeah.’ Kaidan leaned back, almost surprised to find he still could, and rubbed his neck, wincing at the thick stubble on his throat. ‘Not enough dancing for that. Not enough music.’

‘Post-invasion humor?’ Garrus’s voice hissed like depressurized air through panels made of stainless steel. ‘I never thought you had it in you.’

Liara joined them an hour or so later. It was just the three of them. Not all the survivors of an original crew, but Kaidan let Liara get him some water and Garrus mentioned that hospitals these days—especially emergency hospitals—had absolutely no service regarding a turian’s need for _something_ to drink while they were hanging around on news.

‘Water’s fine,’ Kaidan said. ‘Thanks, Liara. Really, I… Thanks.’

Somebody had to come through that door and say it was okay. That everything was gonna be okay.

They didn’t; Kaidan wasn’t so much expecting as he was hoping, and in a weird way—a lot of weird ways—he knew those two things usually didn’t come together. Liara put a hand on his shoulder, gripping gently through the pain. Garrus crossed his arms over his chest, one heel up on the wall, and Kaidan thought about everyone they’d have to tell, everyone who’d thought that Shepard could be rebuilt twice and actually expected it to work—without setbacks, complications, impossible odds that, for once, first human Spectre John Shepard couldn’t defeat.

‘They called you here?’ Kaidan asked, a few hours too late for conversation.

‘I was listening in on the private lines,’ Liara admitted.

‘I’d tell you how I found out, but then I’d have to kill you,’ Garrus said.

It was enough like old times that Kaidan almost laughed. The sound he made wasn’t something he could trust and he clamped down on it, hard, stuffing it back inside and locking it up as tight as his chest.

It’d hold. It’d have to, for a while.

‘Trust Shepard to be dramatic,’ Garrus said. ‘You know he’s just planning the perfect entrance. Timing is everything and at least he’s always been smarter than he looks.’

‘Liara,’ Kaidan began.

‘Garrus _is_ right,’ Liara said.

Earlier that morning—or late the night before—Kaidan had been talking about the crash landing, talking to Shepard’s chest and the beard he was growing, which Kaidan was apparently trying to match. All the time in the world, and no time to shave. ‘You should’ve seen it,’ he’d said. ‘I was half expecting Lieutenant Vega and Grunt to want to stay, play with the local fauna. Take something home as pets. You weren’t there to ask if they could keep ‘em, though, so I guess that’s why they didn’t.’

Then, he’d tried to say something about Joker, about EDI, about the way she’d been in his arms long after the light in her eyes went out. But it’d reminded him too much of what he was doing—only his arms weren’t like Joker’s. They’d been empty, his fingers laced together, knuckles bumping the edge of the cot.

When Hackett arrived, Kaidan knew this was it. There was gonna be news, something good or something bad, and when was there ever anything neutral or in between? It was an either-or situation and it always had been.

‘Sir,’ Kaidan said. He stood and saluted and it didn’t feel as empty as everything else.

‘I got here as soon as I could. Contacted by the special unit we’ve got. I know, I know—Shepard’s going to kick my ass seven ways to Sunday when he finds out how Alliance has been doing everything but roll out the red carpet for him, but maybe one of you might be able to talk some damn sense into him.’ Hackett paused; his voice sounded like the rubble Kaidan had seen in the Presidium Commons, or what was left of the Presidium Commons. All torn up, tired and in pieces, but still kind of solid, at least for what it was. It hadn’t been vaporized, so that was one thing it had going for it. ‘But if we don’t give him the very damn best we can, then that’s on us. He made his decisions. Now we have to make ours. Isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Kaidan said.

Hackett took off his cap and wiped the sweat out of his hair. ‘Damn conditioned air just doesn’t work right anymore, not with these rolling brownouts. How’s a goddamn hero supposed to recuperate if he’s lying in his own damn sweat the whole time?’

‘Talking about Shepard or yourself, Admiral?’ Garrus asked. When Hackett looked at him, a TO’s _you begging me for latrine duty, soldier?_ if Kaidan ever saw one, Garrus added, ‘Sir.’

‘Well it’s good to see you can still joke about something at a time like this. Hell, if I wasn’t so busy sleeping an hour for every twenty-three I’m _not_ sleeping, I’d be busting plenty of guts, myself,’ Hackett said. ‘Save the jokes for Shepard. Make him glad he woke up in this hell-hole. Make him feel like home’s not so much about the buildings staying in one piece but the people around you thinking they’re goddamn _hilarious_.’

The door hissed open. Kaidan had almost forgotten—until he’d seen the tear in Hackett’s uniform, patched up as good as could be—that there was more destruction outside than there was in the bunker pockets around the place, pristine and untouched and decontaminated, quiet except for the machines.

‘The patient is conscious now,’ the salarian in front of them said. No blood on his coat, just a datapad in his hands.

Like Shepard coming to or staying under was a matter of green lights or red lights on a patient’s data-file.

‘A positive prognosis,’ the salarian continued, Kaidan’s legs heavier than a training recruit’s first basic deployment equipment, especially when you’d been carrying the pack for three days straight in twelve distinct weather simulations. Kaidan wondered which this simulation was: blizzard or monsoon, or maybe the heat of a desert. No quick winds, no blasts of ice or blinding rain. Just a long, scorched slog across unforgiving terrain, running out of energy bars long after you ran out of water, not being able to choke a damn protein down.

It was rough, but it taught you things. How to put one foot in front of the other and just keep moving, even when the ground itself, the air, the atmosphere, was working against you.

‘Now give me that _good prognosis_ stuff in numbers,’ Hackett was saying. ‘I don’t want a word that could mean anything depending on personal interpretation. I want _odds_.’

Kaidan didn’t want odds. He had to see him. He wasn’t Garrus but Garrus wasn’t shouldering his way in, either, dragging the waiting bench behind him to blockade the door, tossing nurses out into the hall while covering himself. Or maybe throwing Shepard a Kessler he’d managed to sneak in and having _Shepard_ do the honors straight from the hospital bed.

‘I’m going in,’ Kaidan said.

‘Well it’s about damn time,’ Garrus replied.

Not even Hackett tried to stop him on the basis of protocol. Not even the salarian. Liara let go of his shoulder and Kaidan moved past everybody else, through the open door, fully decontaminated and not waiting anymore.

Only one of those feelings was familiar. The other one slammed into him like a subzero Noveria wind or maybe a wall of sand in a storm on Mars. Either way, communications, getting past all that, trying to meet up with the rest of your extraction team… It wasn’t easy. You ended up with your head bashed in more times than not, or your chest bruised, or your ribs cracked over lungs that couldn’t get enough air in or enough air out.

But Shepard was there, messed up and scruffy, with his eyes open. One of them might’ve been bloodshot but they were both blue, the same blue they’d been in London, just reflecting a different kind of light. No explosions, either, unless you counted the ones in Kaidan’s stomach or the quieter, subtler ones, the beeps and stutters of the machines.

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

It felt so damn good to say it. Not over a resting body, not over a chest that wasn’t rising and falling the way it did some mornings—some rare mornings—when Kaidan was the one who woke up first for a change. Not even being there with him, the bed too small, Shepard’s condition too unstable. Nothing in his arms—but Shepard with his eyes open, the bloodshot one only swollen shut halfway, and his stubble and his scars and his unbruised lips.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

There was surprise in that—like _he’d_ been the one not thinking he’d see somebody again, or hear their voice, or watch them wince when they tried smiling. Kaidan crossed the room, no barricades, no anything between them, and he was careful, but…

He had to kiss him. It was either that or make it obvious to the rest of the attending medics that he was, honestly, losing it, all the gratitude and relief and joy harder to handle than any of the pain or the fear or even the loss. Loss had to be defined by something, _against_ something it wasn’t. And somehow, it was the good stuff that tried to break you. It was the good stuff that was heavier, stronger—and not as common, either.

Shepard’s cheeks and jaw were rough but they were warm, pressed against Kaidan’s palms. One of them was shaking. Kaidan never won at cards with Vega, especially when they’d played Skyllian Five, but he’d bet on that being his hands, while Shepard was steady.

This was it. Holding it together for so long only to crumble, to fold like a house of cards, when it mattered most. Kaidan cursed, maybe out loud, maybe not, and kissed Shepard gentler than he wanted to, harder than he should have. Bad hospital beard on bad hospital beard, bad breath and everything.

Kaidan pulled back, forehead on forehead, wrinkles and scars. ‘Shepard,’ he repeated. God, but it felt so good to say it. However much he wanted to, without suspecting he was talking to a photograph or worse, a name on a plaque.

‘Hey, whoa, lieutenant,’ Shepard said, breathless, as warm as his skin. ‘I’m happy to see you too, but… Where’d _that_ come from?’

Kaidan froze. Cryogenic rounds couldn’t have done the job better. 

‘Still,’ Shepard said, ‘that’s, uh… Quite the hello. Don’t tell me Joker’s going to kiss me next? I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet.’

Kaidan’s hands were steady when he drew them back, the warmth left on his fingers from Shepard’s throat fading almost immediately. One of the doctors was talking with Hackett, their low voices blending into just another rhythm in the hospital room; Kaidan could see it from his periphery vision with Shepard still in his sights. Shepard’s face and shoulders blurred, then refocused sharply.

It was him—older and weary, without the buzz cut everybody saw on the posters and VIs and holographic trading cards and action figures and in Alliance blues. And he was alive, and they could go from there. Wherever they needed, whatever they didn’t have, Shepard was awake.

‘Guess I just got…caught up in the moment, Commander,’ Kaidan said. He would have made a decent member of a volunteer extraction team, picking his way through the rubble as carefully as he picked his words, to make sure nothing else collapsed on unsteady foundations. ‘You had us all worried for a while there. The whole crew. We didn’t…’

‘Alenko,’ Hackett said.

Days Kaidan had spent sitting by Shepard’s side with no answers, no uneven breaths, no yawns pressed against Shepard’s knuckles or stretched muscles twinging, stretched joints popping. All there’d been were regular checkup times, Shepard’s hand half-curled on the side of the bed, Kaidan’s hands covering it and Kaidan’s voice when he remembered what conversation was, nobody talking when he didn’t.

_But I’ll tell you one thing, Shepard. That’s the last time… The last time I don’t go somewhere with you. Seems like you’re always trying to leave me behind and eventually, you know, I’m… I’m gonna get a complex._

‘We need to talk,’ Hackett added. ‘Outside. Now, soldier.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Kaidan gave his own hand a squeeze for a change. ‘About Joker. He’s not going to ambush you, Shepard.’

‘That’s good to know,’ Shepard replied. ‘Probably wouldn’t be as good of a kisser, anyway.’

Kaidan almost chuckled. _Good one_. But the sound wouldn’t have made it out alive like some people always seemed to be able to—and there was gratitude in that, somewhere, only an extraction team hadn’t managed to salvage what was left of it yet.

Outside in the hall, Garrus was listening to one of the doctors while Liara was talking to another.

‘There’s something you need to know, Alenko,’ Hackett said. He was wearing his uniform, blue and decorated with some of the more understated medals, and Kaidan stood to attention even with his muscles protesting the choice. Telling them off, working against them—it actually felt good. Something to direct energy toward, with an end goal in sight; some small objective to reach. 

‘About the fact that Shepard doesn’t seem to remember anything since before he was spaced, sir?’ Kaidan didn’t think he sounded like a smartass. He didn’t think he sounded like anything or anyone.

Hackett sighed, deep and pained. ‘None of this bullshit ever makes a lick of common sense—not to mention it gives me a headache for the rest of the damn day just thinking about it. But the way I understand it—if you can call that _understanding_ —is that there was a graybox inside of Shepard’s head. Now, I can tell you it wasn’t there before he died the first time, and the remains of that graybox have Cerberus written all over them. It’s their technology, Alenko. They put that thing into Shepard’s brain like a goddamn boot disc.’

‘The remains,’ Kaidan repeated.

The Cerberus thing… It was old ground. Kaidan was still treading water out there in the deep, but saying the name would have made _him_ feel like he was the one who was still living in the past.

‘What Shepard went through on the Citadel… It wasn’t pretty. He survived because he’s the toughest son of a bitch the galaxy’s ever seen—and I mean it—but you get knocked around enough…’ Hackett sighed again, deeper, deflating like a hanar in a vacuum chamber. ‘According to the good doctors at this institution—and you can count on them being the best we could find, only the best—that graybox was destroyed by some kind of explosion here on the Citadel. The real _big_ one. It’s damaged goods, Alenko. The damn thing was broken beyond our capacity to repair.’

‘Understood, sir,’ Kaidan said.

Hackett stared at him, narrow and inscrutable. ‘If it’s not one thing,’ he said finally, and let off a stream of krogan curses that made it obvious he’d been in communications with Wrex lately. Even Eve—Bakara—might’ve been the one to teach him some of those.

They worked for the situation, but the only curse Kaidan could think of was _Shepard_. Whether that was the curse he was suffering or the curse he made the people around him suffer by proximity—or a little bit of both—it didn’t matter. It just was.

This was it.

The thing about the training Kaidan had gone through was that it prepared you for worst-outcome scenarios every time. What to do when you were stranded without a beacon. What to do when you were cornered and all the tactics you’d memorized in simulation rooms on countless training stations didn’t apply. What to do when you got spaced, what to do when you _thought_ you had a better plan than your CO, how to tell yourself to shut up and follow orders and it wasn’t in your hands anymore. It just wasn’t in your hands.

‘Ah, Cerberus,’ Garrus said. Kaidan recognized the way he sounded: the kind of shearing metal shriek you heard when you were inside an all-terrain vehicle that’d just been hit by some damn impressive firepower, splitting and charring the armored shell. ‘As if it wasn’t fun enough chasing after a bunch of their operatives when we _should_ have been focusing on the real problem—it looks like they’re _still_ overachievers. A parting gift? They _shouldn’t_ have.’

‘You think I could take a look at that file on Shepard—on the Commander?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Clearance granted,’ Hackett replied. ‘Now, I don’t give a varren’s ass to go through the paperwork needed to make that official. Just show the Major your datapad, doctor.’

The cool sides of the datapad pressed into Kaidan’s palms. ‘Hey, Liara,’ he said. ‘You understand any of this?’

‘I might be the wrong kind of doctor for that, I’m afraid,’ Liara replied. Still, she looked at the information over Kaidan’s shoulder.

It wasn’t too difficult to figure out the jargon.

_Status: Unable to retrieve data._

_Status: Unable to retrieve data._

_Status: Data extraction failed._

_Status: Commander John Shepard, Spectre. Graybox damaged beyond repair. Removal necessary._

Kaidan reminded himself—you only needed a second opinion for the good news, not the bad.

‘Better if we don’t overload him with all the information at once, right?’ Kaidan cleared his throat. Something was still stuck in there, like his heart or his hopes or six days of sleeping in hour-long increments whenever he could afford to, whenever he could kick his own stubbornness out of the airlock. Living that way was like the old school stuff—the runs they did back in brain camp, even, on Jump Zero, a game they had to play called _Last Biotic Standing._ If you could keep quiet and manage to get more rest for your aching muscles and terrified brain than anyone else, you’d win. Hands down. It was that simple.

And the simplest things were the hardest to execute. Just knowing how much sleep your body needed to run and how little you could get away with—at least before pushing yourself to that limit left you in bed for a week with a headache so bad all you remembered was the vomiting by how sore your throat was after.

‘We’ll be looking into that graybox,’ Hackett said. ‘We have it in our custody and we’ll get scientists on that right away. The best ones we’ve got.’

‘Shepard… I don’t know if he’d want any of that, Admiral,’ Kaidan replied. ‘He’d figure those scientists would be put to better use somewhere else, like getting out clean water supply systems as fast as you can and fuel-efficient vehicles for supply transport.’

‘No kidding.’ Hackett put his cap back on, tugging the brim down hard. ‘But we can spare one or two minds for this project. Maybe even get a few POWs on the case.’

‘Cerberus?’ Garrus asked. ‘Now isn’t _that_ ironic. Well, we already know they _can_ be useful. Why not?’

Liara put a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder again. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘Better than some people,’ Kaidan said, looking to the open door, Shepard inside getting lights flashed into his eyes. Shepard could see ahead just fine, though.

It was the behind that was a problem, and no amount of _look into the light_ was gonna fix that.

*


	3. III

Officially, they weren’t supposed to spring the whole _died for a couple of years—and now you’ve forgotten about defeating the Reapers and saving the galaxy_ news on Shepard while he was still in intensive care. Whoever wanted to sit on the bed next to him, breathing the same close, hot air, eyes shut, with a hand on the back of his neck and a thumb against the pulse beating through his throat… It wasn’t about them, what they wanted, because it was about what Shepard _needed_. Nothing to cause a breakdown, a relapse, another glitch and another setback.

Garrus brought in a deck of cards. ‘He remembers how to sucker somebody in a game of Skyllian Five, at least,’ Garrus reported back after. ‘He took down three nurses, one doctor and two surgeons. Oh, it was Shepard all right.’

That wasn’t the question. Kaidan watched Shepard through the glass—kind of like watching him through that clear plastic tarp. Only Shepard was awake now, fumbling the deck of cards when he tried to shuffle them.

It was good physical therapy. His doctors had cleared it, even encouraged it.

Kaidan didn’t sit on the bed next to him, breathing the same close, hot air, eyes shut, with a hand on the back of his neck and a thumb against against the pulse beating through his throat. Shepard was in there and Kaidan wasn’t—and for the first time in over a week he shaved, hands steady enough to get the job done, in the hospital washroom meant for surgeons to clean themselves up and discard their contaminated operating gloves. 

‘It won’t be easy on Lieutenant Vega,’ Kaidan said. ‘Or Cortez, or Traynor, or Allers… It won’t be easy.’

‘I doubt it’s easy on anyone,’ Liara said. ‘…They need me at one of the Reaper sites in London for some research on how to gather and control that data. If I say any more about it, I’m sure Garrus will have to kill you.’ She paused, the smile in her voice just enough to pull Kaidan through another minute or so, cheeks stinging, not used to be being nothing but bare skin. But he’d get used to it, an old habit replaced by a new one—not even for that long.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan replied. ‘Good luck out there, Liara.’

‘The same to you.’ Liara stood beside him a few moments longer. Kaidan didn’t count the seconds. They both let Shepard drop the cards and scrape them together himself, alone except for the machines still pumping him full of the fluids he needed to keep his strength up.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said again. ‘Would you do me a favor and get me a couple of things sent in?’

‘That depends on what those things are.’ Liara already had a datapad out. ‘If you want Reaper technology, there’s a good chance I won’t be able to oblige.’

Kaidan gave her the list and Liara had her game face on like she was playing poker with Shepard. If she didn’t expect what Kaidan was asking for, she didn’t bring it up. After she left, Kaidan knew he had to face Shepard sometime—the guy he’d kissed, the guy who’d compared that kiss to kissing Joker—and there was only one way to play it, even if Kaidan had spent the weeks before V-Day losing at cards to Vega. He knew strategy, when to fold, when to pick up another card. His losses were about luck; they had nothing to do with a lack of skill.

He was just playing by the rules.

He headed inside.

Shepard looked up from the uneven stack of cards and Kaidan didn’t focus on them too long, not wanting to make it obvious he’d seen how shakily they’d been put together. ‘No kissing this time, commander,’ he said.

‘Understood, Kaidan.’ Shepard paused. ‘…Anybody tell you you’re going gray?’

Kaidan brushed some of the hair in question back from his temple. Shepard had done that for him but only a couple of times, on rare nights when sleep was actually nothing more pressing than an afterthought. He’d kissed the pulse, too, lips over the constant, distant potential of a headache, and his breath had warmed Kaidan’s skin. That, Kaidan should have told him. _That_ was hope in the ashes, what kept a soldier alive when he was fighting impossible odds and total extinction.

‘…Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘A few people have mentioned it. You know, things have been…’

‘Stressful lately.’ Shepard almost dropped a card, steadying it with a clumsy sound against the tray in front of him. The sudden interruption made Kaidan wince but he locked it inside—and if he hadn’t been sleeping in a hospital chair for days before it, he wouldn’t have twitched at all.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan repeated. ‘That’s… I guess that’s one way to put it.’

‘Yeah—the manageable way,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan almost laughed, not wanting to know how deep the shadows were under his eyes. ‘I…like the beard,’ he said instead, and Shepard lifted a stiff finger to his chin.

‘This thing? Itches like hell.’ One of Shepard’s scars resettled and Kaidan realized, for the time being, it was almost a smile. ‘You ought to sit down for a while, Kaidan. Take a load off. You look like you could use it.’

Kaidan did chuckle at that, shaking his head, his neck about as stiff as Shepard’s movements. Well, maybe a little less. The motion felt choppy, disconnected from the rest of his body, where all the smaller aches and pains were working on canceling each other out, or at least steering Kaidan into the territory of _numb_.

The body could only deal with so much before it shut its systems down. Humans weren’t that much different from black boxes and synthetic life-forms sometimes, just storing information and trying not to lose power.

Kaidan pulled up a chair, measuring the right distance between his seat and Shepard’s cot, then lowered himself into it. If he went slow, it wasn’t so difficult to get through without folding like Shepard’s house of cards.

Just a lieutenant sitting in front of his old commander, only one of Shepard’s blue eyes clear.

‘You wanna beat me some at Skyllian Five?’ Kaidan offered.

‘Well, Kaidan, that’s generous of you,’ Shepard replied. ‘Hey, about…’

‘It’s good to see you doing so well,’ Kaidan said. ‘It’s been a long time since… Since we’ve heard you talking like this. You want me to deal?’

Shepard slid the cards together, moving with the same strategy Kaidan lived by these days: slow, labored, but it got closer and closer to precise with every unnatural stretch. ‘Maybe we can switch off,’ Shepard said. ‘I’ll start, though.’

‘That seems fair.’ Kaidan didn’t go over the lines in his face, the scars he could have mapped out by now—the guy in the bed in front of him who wasn’t the guy saying _I love you_ , finally, not when it was too late, just when _they_ were too late. And the selfish part of him that thought _at least_ …

But he couldn’t finish the thought because it made him hate himself, shell-shocked like the rest of London, waking up to fresh wounds tingling with fresher medigel—thrown so far he had to wonder, for the first time since he was a messed up kid too young to handle the implants in his brain, whether or not it was worth it to get up again.

Shepard took the first three rounds, Alliance-issue card faces passing in front of Kaidan like he was looking at names on a memorial wall. Dead soldiers—famous ones, but no longer able to serve with them. There could’ve been a new addition to that number, a special limited-edition Commander Shepard Ace, one of spades and one of diamonds, and it was important, so damn important, to be grateful that wasn’t going to happen.

‘You know, poker’s more my thing,’ Kaidan said. ‘…Depending on who I’m playing and what the stakes are.’

‘CO can’t go easy on his crew,’ Shepard replied.

Not that Shepard ever did that.

When you looked at it that way, every day was like basic training all over again. The courses life ran you through, not as prepared as you thought you were, using the lessons you’d learned where they didn’t exactly apply and hoping they’d stick like a makeshift bandage in the unfamiliar wild.

‘No wonder you’ve got all that gray,’ Shepard added. ‘Making faces like that, I’m surprised you’re not _all_ gray like Hackett by now.’

‘Yeah.’ Kaidan folded, then cracked a stiff joint in his back. ‘Me, too.’

‘My beard’s not going that gray, is it?’ Shepard asked.

Kaidan couldn’t look at him close enough to answer that, not all the way. ‘Shepard,’ he said, ‘you’re the kind of commander who gives that honor to the rest of us first before you think to join in on the trend.’

Shepard actually chuckled at that, wincing at the same time, covering it up with a tight jaw and bruised knuckles. ‘Okay, you got me there. Hey, these cards Garrus brought—a couple of them are marked. Looks like a varren might’ve been snacking on them.’

It was one small detail—important to pin down, important not to let it slip through the cracks. Kaidan was better than that; he was a good soldier and followed orders and left when somebody told him to, even when he knew how it felt after. What it meant to be saved. What it meant to survive. The view from the window he saw whenever he closed his eyes, not the stars outside the Normandy on a quiet night between planets.

‘So that’s your secret,’ Kaidan said. ‘Something tells me you and Garrus might’ve set that up on purpose.’

‘Every card shark needs a wingman,’ Shepard replied. ‘Especially one that makes him look _more_ trustworthy by comparison, not less. Garrus has the right face for that—especially with that new scar.’

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said, ‘Shepard. You want some lunch?’

‘Biotic metabolism, huh?’ Shepard’s scars shifted again, along with the stubble around them. ‘If it’s what the doctor ordered, sure.’

Kaidan went to get it himself, leaving Shepard with a nurse to take his stats, to check his pulse and tut over the slow return of his vision. Kaidan had heard the doctors talking about damage to the optic nerves—the bright lights at the explosion Shepard had been in the center of. That wasn’t anything like the eye of a storm at all, no safe spot for riding it out.

They’d repaired Shepard’s eardrums while he was under—Kaidan had read that on his file—although the implants might deteriorate over time, they said. After a while, he’d experience some hearing loss, but his eyes _would_ heal once they got the right transplants.

Kaidan rested his elbow against the wall. There was nobody around to see him press his head to the cradle formed between his bicep and his forearm, closing his eyes, taking three deep, slow breaths.

Three was enough. Three was all he needed. ‘Hospital food,’ he said in place of kissing Shepard hello again, setting Shepard’s meal down on the remote-control tray. He had to stop thinking like that, or just… Stop thinking, period. Stop feeling, too, if he could manage it—achieve the same numb safety measure emotionally alongside physically. ‘They want you to eat, keep up your strength, and then…’

‘Then they serve you something that tastes like it came from the waste removal system on a batarian slaving ship.’ Shepard shook his head, one slow motion from left to right, watching Kaidan with his good eye. ‘I guess spaced commanders can’t be choosers.’

‘That’s...’ Kaidan peeled back the wrapper on a gummy protein. At least it didn’t smell. It didn’t smell like anything. ‘That’s an honor I’ve never had, myself.’

‘Cheers,’ Shepard said, elbow cracking as he lifted his vitamin water in a half-salute. ‘Drinking with a straw… You know, I’d feel like a kid again if I could remember back that far.’

‘Maybe I’ll join you next time,’ Kaidan replied.

There was something to it, anyway.

They ate without the same long silences that’d made them comfortable at Apollo’s Café—and all the dates after that, when they didn’t have to say anything to understand they were doing okay together. It wasn’t just about opportunities presenting themselves, needing some company at night. It wasn’t a system of coping, it was just…

Them. Together. Like old times and new times.

Kaidan chewed his protein until his jaw ached and he could swallow it without choking. Shepard’s meal was all liquid to help him digest it more easily—but even then, later that evening, he was sick anyway, not getting his nutrients already broken down and through a tube. That was the problem with getting better: you always had to realize how things had gotten worse.

‘Would’ve thought you’d be leaving by now,’ Shepard said, Kaidan finding one of the disinfectant packs after ringing for the nurse. Kaidan wiped Shepard’s mouth instead of kissing it, his hands clinical and careful instead of selfish, grateful, even relieved. ‘If I could, I’d be out of here before you could say _holy hanar_.’

‘You want me to tell you _I should go_?’ Kaidan asked.

The gentleness in his voice or the regret in his fingers—something filtered through, because Shepard looked up at him, one eye bright, even questioning.

Then, the nurses came in and Kaidan stepped aside. He couldn’t spend the night in Shepard’s room because it wasn’t his place, so he said he’d come back later, make the whole thing go faster, or at least prove the theory that misery liked company.

‘You being punished for something?’ Shepard asked. ‘Seems to me like hospital visiting duty’s beneath you, Kaidan.’

‘Maybe I volunteered,’ Kaidan said.

It meant something closer to _maybe I’ve got nobody to blame except for myself._

He used the break room set up for the staff to sleep; without the illusion of privacy, he didn’t see what Liara was up to or even what was happening outside the hospital’s walls. There was a galaxy out there just trying to fix itself and every man counted, but no one counted as much as the one on the level below, bruised cheeks hollow, stubble flecked with gray.

 _Yeah_ , Kaidan thought. _You are going gray, Shepard._ Proving the theory that misery liked company.

*


	4. IV

The items Kaidan had asked Liara for came two days and too many rounds of Skyllian Five later. They’d settled on building houses with the cards instead just for a change in routine, something of a challenge when Shepard’s hands shook. Progress was made so slowly that sometimes Kaidan thought they weren’t making any progress at all.

The only messages he checked were the ones from Mom, and even those went unanswered sometimes. What was he supposed to say—that he was working on a house of cards that kept falling down, and every time it did they had to start building it up again?

‘You know, if Liara was here, she’d say this was a metaphor for something,’ Shepard said, the thirteenth time they’d suffered a complete reset in their chain of setbacks. ‘But it seems to me it’s just two stubborn soldiers not knowing when to quit.’

‘Maybe that’s a metaphor for something, too,’ Kaidan replied.

Maybe it was the same metaphor.

Their fingers brushed over a king—a turian admiral, in this case—and Shepard’s shook or twitched or whatever it was they did. It seemed pretty close to trembling. Kaidan was the only one there to cover Shepard’s hand, but he couldn’t sleep in the chair next to Shepard’s cot anymore—so hand-holding was out of the question, too.

‘I got you something,’ Kaidan said after dinner, the package beat up from quick travel, but the rattling inside wasn’t a problem for once. It was supposed to be in pieces, unlike everything else. ‘Well, technically Liara got you something, but…’

‘But who wants to get technical.’ Shepard watched the box as Kaidan set it down, then started on opening it after Kaidan looked away. Leaving him to the difficulty, because there was satisfaction in getting a hard thing like that done—telling yourself that next time, it was gonna be easier, if not easy. ‘It’s… It looks broken.’

‘Don’t tell me you don’t recognize a model ship kit when you see one,’ Kaidan said.

Not remembering somewhere close to three years of a life you’d lived—died, then lived—was one thing. Not remembering a hobby like that was another.

‘Yeah,’ Shepard replied, quiet, almost like a kid or a krogan straight out of the test tube, before it started shouting. ‘I remember. A thing like this needs a delicate touch, though. Otherwise you ruin the paint job.’

‘I know,’ Kaidan said. ‘Better get started, then.’

Shepard tipped the pieces out onto the tray-table once Kaidan cleared up from dinner, a data port with the instructions Kaidan had to get a datapad in to play. They watched the steps play out on one of the nurse’s, in between updates on patient health in the other wards.

‘You need to see it again?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Wouldn’t trust myself as commander if I did,’ Shepard replied.

His chuckle was this rare, raw thing, and earnest, laughter so unusual in the final weeks before V-Day that Kaidan wondered if _that_ wasn’t the ghost that’d come back alive—instead of the Shepard he’d known and kissed and taken to Apollo’s Café, and taken to bed.

Kaidan looked away before he was outright staring.

‘Am I doing that bad, Kaidan?’ Shepard asked.

‘Hey, that isn’t…’ Kaidan didn’t know whether to smile or what, but any expression he wore was bound to be an easy lie. ‘You’re doing really well, Shepard,’ he settled on finally, while Shepard held two small pieces of the replica Normandy in his hands.

‘One of these days,’ Shepard said, ‘they’re going to figure out how to rebuild people this easily. Maybe then some of us won’t have to spend so much time in the ICU.’

‘Put a lot of trained medical professionals out of their jobs that way,’ Kaidan replied.

‘Guess you’re right,’ Shepard said.

He had half of a thruster done by the time Kaidan left for the night, since ‘She’s not a ship until she’s got an engine—nothing to drive her without a place to burn the fuel.’

‘Night, Shepard,’ Kaidan said, and lay down without the weight of Shepard’s shoulder on his forearm, the sweat on the back of his neck only a few inches away from Kaidan’s lips. He licked them out in the hallway, then watched the live feed of Alliance soldiers before going to bed—including one he recognized, Lieutenant James Vega—pulling a fuselage out from under a collapsed building, where a transport ship like the Kodiak had crashed but not burned.

‘…commend their efforts,’ Diana Allers’s voice began, before the feed cut to her in a makeshift newsroom, probably in London, with a wall at her back that was more empty space than stone. ‘All of us are doing what we can, when we can, where we can. We can’t expect any more than that—but don’t you think we shouldn’t expect any less?’

A soundbyte played, from Hackett’s visit to London earlier that day. ‘Rebuilding’s not the easy part,’ he said, squinting into the sun and dripping sweat. ‘But at least it’s not the part with the Reapers, either. Some might say we’re spaced, floating, no chance of getting bailed out—but we’re bailing _ourselves_ out, damn it. That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve always done. And we won’t stop doing it until every last piece of salvage and every last survivor has been accounted for.’

_Hackett out._

Kaidan rubbed the bridge of his nose, pinching it until he saw white instead of black. But the headache… That was coming up on the horizon, no doubt about it. The next morning the nurse took one look at him and said there were enough pain meds for him to take two if he needed it, but need was a relative thing. There were people who needed more to survive and people who needed a lot less.

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ Kaidan said, and then, maybe a beat too late, ‘thanks. Thank you for telling me.’

He wasn’t gonna use it.

He wasn’t gonna think about it, either, Shepard starting work early on the second thruster, saying he was looking forward to getting a jump on the stealth system—probably sometime next week, at the rate he was going.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said.

He kept seeing white instead of black. The headache was rolling in like a sandstorm on Mars and it made wavelengths just as blurry, static in his brain and heat in his skin, with a prickle of nausea—like he was the one who couldn’t digest simple protein shakes, not Shepard. Like a blast had scrambled _him_ up inside, and even if the scar tissue couldn’t be seen, it’d still changed how he processed a thing forever.

‘Hey.’ Shepard’s voice had this quiet, bedroom quality to it. _Hey_ , in the morning, the only time Shepard had done what Kaidan asked—the only time Shepard had woken him. Kaidan did his best to make it worth Shepard’s while, wrapping his arms around the back of Shepard’s neck and pulling him down for a luxury they couldn’t bank on enjoying too often: kisses in the morning, Shepard’s legs spread and his knees bearing down on the mattress. And another _hey_ this one time Kaidan was dealing with a flare-up, lying back in the darkness, thinking about how there wasn’t room for every good thing he wanted—so how was it there was always room for another headache?

 _Hey_ , Shepard had said, easing into the bunk at Kaidan’s side. It wasn’t about being brothers in arms. For a guy who spent his whole life leaving facilities and vistas and entire planets blown to pieces Kaidan thought, when the headache cleared off… He’d really thought that it was possible for Shepard to make it, to live in a galaxy where most things got put together instead of destroyed.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan replied, but he knew how he sounded. Hoarse, pinched, tight. In pain he hadn’t earned, pain he’d have to anticipate for the rest of his life.

‘Too stubborn for a nurse?’ Shepard’s chuckle seemed different. Maybe it was Kaidan’s head, his ears, that weren’t listening to it right. ‘I know a guy like that. But for some reason his friends and squadmates are always telling him to quit acting like an idiot and let the professionals take care of him.’

‘Sounds like my kind of guy,’ Kaidan said.

‘I don’t know.’ Shepard chuckled again; it was definitely different. ‘I hear he’s pretty tough to get along with. Has medals of honor and everything, plenty of friends on the Citadel, all these commendations… But that doesn’t make it any easier to be around him. He’s always getting people into trouble.’

‘No kidding.’ Kaidan swallowed, the nausea rising and sinking, like the tide on the shores of Virmire. _Virmire_. Kaidan hadn’t thought about it, not in a long time—until he remembered that he had, that it was on another planet, his brain still scrambled not from implants that kept a steady pace but from a crash-landing, sudden impact that left him reeling even when he’d told himself he was always expecting change. ‘Well, some sacrifices… They can be worth it.’

‘No kidding,’ Shepard agreed.

Kaidan was too far away for Shepard to do anything but keep working on the pieces of his model ship kit. For some reason, Kaidan kept remembering the worst headache he’d ever had, when he was fourteen and still angry about pretty much everything. The memory fed into the pain and the pain trapped the memory. Shepard’s hands weren’t pressed, callused, to Kaidan’s throat—his jaw—index fingers on his temples, rubbing a hurt that couldn’t be healed, not giving up on helping it anyway.

Yeah. That sounded like Kaidan’s kind of guy.

Like it’d always been Kaidan’s kind of guy.

‘Really, Shepard. I’m good.’ Kaidan didn’t have a galaxy to save. Being stubborn like this didn’t mean the end of something, just a part of its continuation.

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said. ‘And you look great. Not like your head’s about to self-vaporize in t-minus fifteen seconds.’

Kaidan managed a laugh. It was the sense of humor that used to take him by surprise more than the color of Shepard’s eyes. And it was the realization that Shepard wasn’t only the soldier everybody saw on the posters or the tired shadow that soldier cast. He was this place, this body in between the broken and the perfect, just another guy like the rest of them, fighting for something too big to explain. Bigger than all of them. Bigger than James Vega, even, and that was saying something.

At least Shepard remembered Kaidan Alenko. Lieutenant James Vega, Steve Cortez, Samantha Traynor, Jack, Grunt, Miranda Lawson…

Kaidan pinched the bridge of his nose tighter.

‘You mind holding something for me while I fit the fuselage together?’ Shepard asked.

He was at the fuselage already. Of course he was.

The room spun for a second—like it had during Kaidan’s first no-gravity training session back when he was in brain camp—but that training had still made him who he was. For better, for worse. For good. Kaidan stayed on his feet and moved to the chair closer to Shepard’s cot, without expecting him to smell a certain way, or rest his forehead against Kaidan’s temple, warm breath on Kaidan’s cheek.

It’d be nice. But it wasn’t gonna happen, and after enough tripping over a step that wasn’t even there, Kaidan would learn that, too.

Just like basic training.

Just like no-gravity sessions.

Shepard’s hand was shaking but it steadied itself. ‘Right here,’ he said, right thumb stiff and held at an awkward angle. ‘Careful. The whole thing could go down if you breathe on it wrong. It’s pretty high quality, but that stuff is always delicate.’

‘You sure know a lot about model ships.’ Kaidan held the interlocking pieces between his thumb and his forefinger, careful not to exert too much pressure on either side.

And Shepard, arm moving slower than if this _was_ a no-gravity session, reached for Kaidan’s temple, not the half-assembled miniature fuselage.

Kaidan let it happen—for a long, long moment. Too long. Shepard’s callused fingers brushed through his hair, where Kaidan knew he was going gray. And if he hadn’t known, there was always Shepard to let him know, pointing it out like that was something anybody could get away with.

It wasn’t.

Shepard’s stiff thumb with a healing scar down the inside ran over Kaidan’s cheek, his forefinger over Kaidan’s scalp. When he found the pulse he stopped and then he started to rub, maybe gentle because he wanted to be, maybe gentle because it took all he had just to lift his arm that high before he got into why he was actually doing it.

It didn’t feel good. But it _felt_ ; it felt like everything. The shape of Shepard’s palm, Kaidan close, so close to turning against it, and the thought behind the action. The reason, the motivation, the gesture. The strength of will it took for Shepard to hold his arm up and give Kaidan something he needed as much as he wanted. Not healing, just trying to help.

Close enough for kissing him again. Softer, more grateful. Telling him that ‘I love you’ was more than something you reserved for final moments and goodbyes. A hand had cupped Kaidan’s face back then, too, only it was wearing gloves and Kaidan’s whole right side had already gone numb. He couldn’t feel it, anything, like he wanted to.

And then, he felt everything.

Figuring out what happened in between—that was what Hackett kept talking about, over and over on the air. He believed that. Not everybody did, but some people.

Shepard’s hand was still against Kaidan’s face, bare except for all the scars. He made uneven circles, small ones, along Kaidan’s hairline, until Kaidan could feel hair slipping out of place and tickling the shell of his ear. A shiver came with it, one he still couldn’t pick out from feeling like he was going to lose his breakfast proteins. Kaidan almost reached for Shepard’s wrist, to cover the back of Shepard’s hand with his palm, slotting knuckles against lifelines.

‘Doctor’ll be coming in soon,’ Kaidan said instead, hands cramping in his lap.

‘You’re here a lot, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied. ‘Not that I’m saying I mind it, so don’t get the wrong idea—’

No, Kaidan thought. He had the right idea. ‘Nurses could probably help you with that ship as much as I could, couldn’t they?’ Kaidan cleared his throat and the noise was so loud in his own skull that he winced. ‘Guess I didn’t help much with that fuselage.’

He put it down. Shepard’s fingertips stayed on him until he pulled away.

‘You don’t have to go, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

But Kaidan knew more than Shepard, at this point, enough to know that he did.

*


	5. V

The Citadel wasn’t in the same shape London had been. There were all kinds of destruction and the news showed some of them, not every last one, but the types that were hopeful. But Kaidan was cleared for extraction work and that was what he did, maybe not hauling up giant pieces of broken tech like Lieutenant Vega, but making himself useful.

More useful than the guy who held the pieces of a model ship together for the other guy building it, anyway.

Hackett was in command of the Citadel Reconstruction Project, the CRP, and in direct communication with Coats, working on the LRP—same thing, only in London. The places that’d been hit the hardest were getting the most help. Sometimes all a soldier needed, all the doctor ordered, was somebody to report to at the end of the day.

Even scattered, they were closer knit than ever. The communal housing set up for survivors was next to the communal housing for rescue teams, soldiers who’d helped win the war but weren’t done serving just yet. Two towers on the old Presidium grounds that hadn’t fallen with the blast had enough empty rooms for residential zoning. ‘Whoever built those,’ Hackett said with his hands in his pockets, ‘sure knew what the hell they were doing. You just don’t see work like this anymore.’

‘Maybe we will, Admiral,’ Kaidan replied.

The sky was ashy gray above the top spire. Kaidan shared his bunkroom with three other guys and it was a little like brain camp, a little like Alliance boot camp, a little like living with a private crew on the Normandy. It was a little like nothing else, sitting around the radio after a ten hour shift, listening to the latest news.

Somebody was looking after the gardens, the fresh green things that’d managed to escape the heat of the blast. Nobody sat down there in them, though, because the air pollution warnings were between orange and red at all times, and staying inside with a mask on until they could breathe was better than rubbing some of the settled ash off a leaf and remembering dates, walks you took alone or together, listening to a fountain running and the noise of people, so many people, living their lives with each other.

Kaidan eased himself down onto the edge of a bed, Diana Allers’s voice over the main frequency talking about Invasion Bonds.

_You did good, Shepard_ , Kaidan thought.

_Nobody could’ve done better._

Shepard would’ve enjoyed it—the turians living next to humans and the krogans doing so much of the heavy lifting, while salarians and asari studied the salvage and drafted architectural plans, implemented waste conversion systems and staffed field hospitals. Torn Alliance blues were kept clean and that was something any soldier could rely on, whether they were on active duty or not.

It was something the civilians could count on, too, faces in missing windows, watching the teams head off to the next sector. Those same faces waited for them to come back after a shift and called out names, questions, or just plain cheers.

There were two walls on the opposite ends of the old commons, now known as the Presidium OC. One was for honoring the dead. One was for giving updates on survivors. Names, when they could. Locations. Visiting hours. Information on where to volunteer. Field nurses, anyone who could hold a bandage steady, were always in demand.

And Kaidan was used to working with turians, with krogan, with salarian, with asari. He had Shepard to thank for that; they all did.

Maybe they’d been stranded and they were only biding their time until they could get off the Citadel—bound for the places they really belonged—but it was what they chose to do with that time that meant Shepard had made a difference. Kaidan thought about going to visit, about telling him that, about letting him know those dark nights asking himself _what the hell am I doing_ weren’t for nothing. They were for everything and everyone.

But then he thought about Shepard’s fingers on his throat and jaw, the freckles on his back, his elbows resting on his thighs, and how he eased into Kaidan’s arms when Kaidan kneeled behind him, rubbing his chest, kissing his shoulders until they softened.

It was better if he didn’t. Liara would, or Garrus, taking over Kaidan’s shifts there while Kaidan took over _his_ shifts on the outside.

Graffiti lined the walls in some sectors, especially down by the Docking Bay, where shanties had been set up for the mercs. _WE TOOK EARTH BACK_ , one of them said, _AND ALL WE GOT WAS THIS LOUSY CITADEL._

So that was where the riots were. And Major Kaidan Alenko, second human Spectre, along with a squad of soldiers that still had most of their armor intact, were commissioned to keep the streets safe and find some real peace for peacetime along the way.

‘Can’t catch a damn break, can we?’ Lieutenant Riviera asked. She reminded him of Ash when she was in armor, that memory of an old squadmate Kaidan caught out of the corner of his eye; when she was out of armor, she reminded Kaidan of every good soldier he’d ever served with. Close-cropped blonde hair, dyed; a scar under her bottom lip that twisted her mouth when she grinned; pale eyes for her dark skin. She never smiled when she could curse instead and she’d been on the Citadel when it all went down, with the last of the citizens who hadn’t made it onto the Evac Shuttles. The way Kaidan heard it, there hadn’t been enough of those even if there _had_ been enough time. ‘You see everyone working together and you think we’ve got it all figured out—how to put contact wars behind us and make a difference, a real change. …And then you get down to the dockies and realize it’s the same—shit, doc, I know I look tough, but you think you could stop treating me like my skin’s thick as a turian’s?—the same shit, different day. It all comes down to where you’re getting patched up.’

‘I don’t know,’ Kaidan said. Riviera had taken most of the heat when they’d broken up the rations smuggling ring operating out of Purgatory; Kaidan had a few bruises, a burn here and a scrape there, but they’d heal fine on their own and there was no point wasting med supplies on anything that was a luxury instead of a necessity. Sure, he missed steak sandwiches, but everybody had something they thought about at night, the one thing they took for granted that the Reapers had taken from them. ‘There’s… There’s a lot that makes it worthwhile.’

‘Never said there wasn’t.’ Riviera looked him up and down, rolling her sweat-stained tank down over the healing burns on her side. ‘Sure wish these punks weren’t using homemade alcohol _bombs_ on us, though. Right, Major?’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan admitted. ‘That’d be nice.’

Ingenuity in the face of adversity. Triumph in the face of tragedy. Kaidan made his report to Hackett, who looked like Kaidan felt—neither one of them having slept for a while, neither one of them looking forward to their dreams when they finally did.

‘We’re gonna lick this,’ Hackett said. ‘We’re gonna kick its ass the same way we took down the Reapers. And Allers can quote me on that all she likes. In fact, I hope she does. People could stand to hear it more often.’ Hackett paused, taking off his hat, wiping his forehead with his elbow. Air filtration and temperature regulation systems sucked up too much power and too much energy, another luxury they didn’t have, along with time and privacy and enough food for somebody with a biotic metabolism. ‘…He’s doing pretty damn well, you know—speaking of licking the Reapers. Up and walking the other day, I hear. Thought I might go for a visit, tell him this’d better be the last time he pulls _heroics_ on us.’

‘That’s… That’s great,’ Kaidan replied. It should’ve been him in there with his shoulders under Shepard’s arm, but it wasn’t. Luxury was the price of living. ‘Hasn’t ever stopped us from calling on him when we need him, though.’

‘You’ll see what happens when everybody’s got a guy like him to rally behind,’ Hackett said. ‘The _air_ in this place is going to change. You coming tomorrow, Major Alenko?’

‘No, sir.’ Kaidan straightened, saluting with his left hand instead of his right, which was still sore from the Purgatory raid.

Hackett snorted, maybe cleared his throat. ‘All right then. Dismissed.’

Kaidan headed back to the wards, to the communal housing facilities, to his room with Booker and Delgado and Ochoa. They were waiting for Ochoa’s bit interview with Allers to come on and Kaidan sat by the window, the curfew dimmers darkening the streets until it was hard to remember this was the Citadel. It felt like a new colony, a small one.

There was some kind of pride and personal investment when you were stationed on one of those—but the same kind of pushback against protection.

People wanted to be able to take care of their own.

‘Just doing my duty,’ Ochoa’s voice said, and Booker whooped, pounding him on the back, Delgado whistling.

Kaidan didn’t flinch. But he didn’t sleep much, either.

Two nights later, Delgado couldn’t get the frequency right. They were still messing with it when Riviera practically knocked their door down, holding one of the standard issue Alliance-frequency radios—and the guy whose radio it probably was in tow.

‘You’re gonna want to hear this,’ she said.

‘…can confirm,’ Allers was saying, ‘that Commander Shepard _did_ survive the Reaper Invasion and his prognosis for recovery is currently excellent. So, tell me, the question I’m sure everyone wants to hear the answer to: How does it feel, Commander?’

Silence. Kaidan only realized he was holding his breath when he saw Riviera—and Booker and Delgado and Ochoa and the soldier with the radio—doing the same thing.

Kaidan had been there. He’d seen it. He’d sat by Shepard’s side and fallen asleep with him for all the wrong reasons, some of the right ones, and he’d kissed him and brought him a model ship to work on, all kinds of things that didn’t matter as much now as it felt like they had before.

‘Feels a little sore, actually.’ Shepard’s chuckle was pure interview. Kaidan knew that tone; he could see the smile on Shepard’s face. ‘And I guess you could say my memory of the whole thing’s pretty hazy. Admiral Hackett—stand-up guy, one of the best soldiers I’ve ever had the honor of serving under—he’s filled me in on the important stuff.’

‘Humble—as always, Commander,’ Allers said. The frequency squeaked, transmission lost for a few seconds, then came back. ‘…the fact that you’re the hero the galaxy needed, at a time when the galaxy needed a hero most?’

‘That’s a lot to swallow, Diana,’ Shepard replied. ‘Even harder than some of these ration proteins we’ve all been getting.’

Riviera snorted. Kaidan’s mouth was dry.

‘After all that hard work,’ Diana continued, ‘you won’t have to worry about a video interview until next week at the earliest. So how does that sound, Commander? You know it’s the least we can do for a hero like you.’

‘Anytime, Diana,’ Shepard said.

They listened to the rest, all the details, where Shepard had been found and what a miracle it was—proof of what the united races could do when facing the worst crisis the galaxy had ever seen. _Tell that to Javik_ , Kaidan thought, and shook his head, but that didn’t knock loose any of the memories he was making up because he hadn’t actually made them.

Shepard eating through a straw, sweating through digestion, steadying his hands with deep, even breaths while he tried to paint the sides of a model ship.

_I love you_ , he’d said. But love wasn’t about two people. It was about circumstances, experiences, all the missed opportunities before the ones you made and kept and lived with. Loved with. Laughed with. Slept with.

‘You were on his crew, Major, weren’t you?’ Riviera asked, and Kaidan blinked. ‘You know the Commander, right?’

‘…Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘Well, I… I used to.’

Delgado whistled again, impressed. ‘You think you could get me an introduction, Major? At _least_ something signed for my little girl—you know she kept telling me she was gonna be Alliance brass someday not like her daddy, but like Commander Shepard.’

‘Sounds dangerous, Delgado,’ Kaidan said. ‘Might want to keep an eye on her before she outranks you.’

‘She’s in London right now.’ Delgado glanced at the window, seeing nothing more—nothing less—than what Kaidan had been staring at earlier. ‘Got news last week she’s safe with her grandma. First chance I get, I’m bringing her Commander Shepard’s autograph.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Kaidan said.

In the morning, wrapped around the memorial statue for the First Contact War, there was a banner with COMMANDER SHEPARD sprayed across it. It looked like it’d been made out of a café tablecloth and maybe written in lipstick. Toys, model ships especially, and short frame vids in cracked frames, broken bottles that caught the light—no flowers, but there weren’t any—were left around the base and Kaidan’s team, the other crews, stopped in front of it on their way out to cleanup. Kaidan even saw a Blasto figurine between a collector’s edition Normandy SR-1 holo-plate and an Alliance badge, polished and shining bright enough to blind whatever idiot stared at it for too long.

Just like the sun.

Kaidan squinted, shading his eyes with his left hand.

‘You think we’ll be seeing him soon?’ Riviera asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Kaidan replied.

*


	6. VI.

It took a week and a half but Allers kept everyone tuning in updated on his progress. What Shepard was doing, how he was eating. ‘I’ve just come back from another visit with the Commander,’ she said, ‘and the one thing that’s given me more hope than anything else I’ve seen these days is Commander Shepard, first human Spectre, the hero who saved us all, sitting up and working on a model ship. Turian cruiser, he tells me. One of his favorites.’ There was a long pause. It was pretty effective. ‘Sometimes, it’s the little things. This has been Diana Allers, reporting to you live with all the latest news on the restoration. Stay tuned for more during the evening broadcast at eighteen hundred tonight.’

Kaidan took his shower. His water allotment didn’t run out the way it used to. He knew the rhythm now, how much time he had, what he could and couldn’t do. He dried off and shaved and when he got back to the room there were messages on his omni-tool.

Liara wanted to know how he was doing. Steve wanted to know how he was doing. Mom wanted to know how he was doing. It was a different system of news broadcasting, private and personal. How the garden was doing; Mom said she was growing fresh produce for the community and designing sustainable local agricultural plots. How London was doing; Steve said there was nobody working harder than Coats, except maybe for James Vega. How the Reaper cleanup was doing; Liara said they were stalled on logistics and Kaidan shook his head.

He’d believe that.

A new message flashed while he was still sorting through how to reply to the old ones, feeling too bone-tired to write a few lines, much less type out everything he should have wanted to say.

_Title: I hear you’re Major Kaidan Alenko now_

Kaidan shut his eyes. They didn’t stay shut; he knew better than trying to solve a bad situation that way.

Most of the time, those bad situations didn’t get solved. Like a bone that hadn’t been set properly, a titanium screw that hadn’t been put in properly, they healed wrong.

But they did heal, anyway.

_Title: I hear you’re Major Kaidan Alenko now_

Kaidan opened it, his eyes open.

_Hackett filled me in on everything I missed. Seems like coming back from the dead twice just isn’t fair to the people who never get to experience it once._

Or to the people who experience it with you, Kaidan thought.

_Guess I shouldn’t have called you lieutenant back then._

Actually, Kaidan thought, it was better this way.

_But there’s no way to write ‘sorry for forgetting about the past three years,’ is there? How pissed do you think Garrus is gonna be? Maybe he won’t notice if he’s too busy with some calibrations._

All the times Kaidan wished for Shepard to feel a little younger, a little less tired, a little less naked in front of the galaxy, going out there suited up and ready for the cracks in the armor to strengthen—he hadn’t wanted this. Be careful what you wish for, Kaidan thought.

_Still, it was a breach of protocol. Maybe I should’ve saluted, too, seeing as how I’m technically serving under you now instead of the other way around._

I’m always under you, Kaidan thought. Always pinned under you.

_Would you believe I’m typing this whole thing myself? Not even using the speech to text option or just plain recording the message. Doctors say it’s good for the hands to keep busy with small things. Said whoever got me that ship kit did my PT progress a pretty big favor, too. Something tells me you tricked me into doing something good for myself by making it actually seem fun for a change. You’re really something, you know that, Major?_

You’re really something too, Commander, Kaidan thought.

_They’re moving me into outpatient care tomorrow morning. I’m figuring that means you—and a lot of other people—are going to be seeing and hearing way too much of me in the near future. I’m the face of the Invasion, only I can’t remember all the best parts._

All the best parts, Kaidan thought.

_Hackett’s been filling me in on some of the things I’ve done. I told him he must’ve had the wrong guy, but there’s no arguing with Hackett once he’s got an idea stuck in his head. Can’t change his mind for anything. He’s almost as stubborn as you are—and that’s saying something._

Kaidan thought about laughing.

_Since it’s taken me a while already to type this much out—you know I’m not a private message kind of guy—I’ll end it here. The days got boring without you around, though. I hear you’re working search and rescue and taking care of situations on the Citadel. Careful with how helpful you are, Kaidan. The next thing you know, C-Sec will start looking to hire you._

_It wouldn’t be the worst job I’ve ever held down_ , Kaidan thought.

_You should come by sometime. Hackett knows where they’re keeping me. Maybe you could fill me in on some of the stuff I’m missing._

Now that’d be funny, Kaidan thought. Sitting in an outpatient facility somewhere in a privatized sector of the Citadel, across from Shepard, with hazy light falling into the room through a crack or two in the windows, his hands folded, his voice steady. Kaidan could tell Shepard all about the things he’d missed, steady and simple, like a debriefing report on a datapad read out loud by a VI. We got together, Shepard, he’d say. One late afternoon, once you’d died and I’d almost died and we realized bygones were bygones. We went out to eat at Apollo’s Café—which isn’t even there anymore, by the way, so I can’t swing you by it again sometime—and after that you took me back to your cabin, to your bed. I know where your freckles are, all of your old scars, and even though I could guess… I don’t know your new ones, not the same way.

_Shepard_

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said, a thought that had to speak for itself. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms until they started to hurt and he realized his timing was off; he was pushing too hard, because feeling something or feeling something else was better than feeling nothing at all.

Steak sandwiches. Sanity checks. Just a quick drink. I love you.

Two people, all that history; two years, all that grief. And now it could be summed up by a few bullet-points in a datapad entry, something Kaidan could’ve emailed Shepard back with to ‘fill him in’ on what he’d missed.

Like he’d come late to a meeting.

Like he’d fallen asleep in the middle of a Blasto movie and woke up five minutes from the end.

‘Fill me in’ was for ‘what did we talk about the past thirty minutes,’ not battles and despair and describing the shape of Shepard’s shoulders every time he lost something he couldn’t put back together again.

Like his memory, this time.

But—because it wasn’t fair to either of them—Kaidan wrote him back. _Sure_ , he said. _I’ll come by sometime. It’s good to hear you’re doing so well, Commander. The finest medical care the Alliance has to offer really does make a difference. If you’re done with the first ship, I’ll have Liara send you another one._

_Major K. Alenko_

His name didn’t even look like his name. His rank, his sign-off, his face in the mirror—none of it was familiar. And if he couldn’t debrief himself on what he’d lived through, then he sure as hell couldn’t do the same for Shepard.

‘Hey, Liara,’ Kaidan said, when he heard the familiar voice on the other end of the private line. ‘Do you think you could find any more of those ship kits and send them Shepard’s way?’

His voice cracked right on the last word. He was tired and the bruises ached, old and new, but there was no excuse for letting himself get that way.

‘Of course.’ Liara didn’t mention it. Her kindness made it obvious how much better than that Kaidan should have been. ‘I saw him four days ago, you know. He was looking so much better.’

‘I’m glad,’ Kaidan said. ‘I’m really glad to hear that, Liara.’

‘It’s quite incredible—the resilience he shows. There isn’t anyone I’ve met who doesn’t take some hope from seeing it can be done. Surviving the impossible, achieving the unthinkable…’ Liara paused. ‘Maybe I know what to research next.’

‘Determination just is,’ Kaidan said. ‘I don’t think there’s much of an explanation for why some people have it more than other people do.’

‘I suppose you’re right about that,’ Liara replied. ‘Though I know too many people who think they’ve run out—as though the reality, more than the definition, is something finite.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Kaidan rubbed his jaw, not as rough as it usually was. He wasn’t used to feeling anything too smooth these days. ‘Anyway, it’s hard to tell. Thanks for looking into the ship thing.’

‘You should really bring it to him yourself,’ Liara said. ‘…Although I suppose I can understand why that would be difficult.’

‘Now that’s one thing that isn’t finite,’ Kaidan said. ‘The difficult stuff. Thanks again, Liara.’

She said he was welcome, and Kaidan figured Shepard would get the package in a couple of days at the latest. Liara was fast like that and—like everything else Kaidan was a part of, shuttling him along with a silent engine that never ran out of fuel—she moved in mysterious ways.

‘We’re moving out, Major,’ Riviera said from the doorway. What was left of the doorway, anyway. Barracks construction wasn’t too high up on the list of repair priorities. ‘You with us?’

‘Yeah, I’m with you,’ Kaidan replied.

*


	7. VII

When the package arrived, Kaidan had to figure it was something Liara had planned—mysterious ways and all—sending the new ship kit to him so he’d have to bring it to Shepard. So they’d sit down together and Kaidan could look at the guy he did and didn’t know, who did and didn’t know him, and come to terms with what he saw—but especially with what Shepard _hadn’t_ seen.

Hell, Kaidan still had Shepard’s dogtag around his neck, the one Shepard had given him before they’d landed in London. One of each, he’d said, handing it over with the solemnity of a medal ceremony, if not the circumstance. Kaidan’s gloved fingers had closed around his and he’d wondered at the time if it wasn’t more of an excuse to hold hands, Steve’s shuttle landing bumpier than usual because of the extreme conditions on the ground.

Kaidan had returned the offering. _One of each_. Side by side and over the heart.

Now, he wondered if Shepard had noticed before somebody, a nurse or a surgeon, had removed the twisted metal he was wearing. If they’d made him a new set yet for the cameras, both of them saying JOHN SHEPARD on the back.

They probably had. With all the interviews he’d have coming up, he had to look like everybody remembered him.

Even if Shepard didn’t remember everybody.

Kaidan opened up the package that night, leaning back in his bunk—trying not to think of it like the times Mom sent care packages to Jump Zero while Kaidan was in brain camp. The protein bars he liked, some gum, a new waterproof watch for the first birthday he’d spent without his family…

The ship inside the box had already been put together. Kaidan didn’t lift it out. For a second, he thought Liara had sent him the wrong thing.

Then, he recognized it. A turian cruiser. The paint-job on the side wasn’t the cleanest but somebody, somebody with shaky hands, had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure the lines were as sharp as they could be. Kaidan could practically see that somebody, sitting in his hospital bed, head bowed for a reason other than the weight of the galaxy settling on his shoulders.

‘You got a secret admirer we should know about?’ Delgado’s whistle had started to be a staple of Kaidan’s diet, something he was used to, something that marked the way time was passing. ‘That’s some fancy stuff right there, Major.’

Under the side paint there was a signature. JS, two simple letters, instead of the full name on a dogtag.

‘Actually, it’s for you, Delgado,’ Kaidan said. ‘For your little girl. Commander Shepard put this together himself.’

‘No way,’ Delgado replied.

‘Turian cruiser,’ Kaidan said.

Exactly like Diana Allers in the first interview. Delgado didn’t even whistle this time, taking the model ship in his hands like breathing on it too hard was enough to break it.

‘I’m gonna be the best dad ever,’ Delgado said. ‘For that second she takes this out of the packaging… There’s gonna be nobody better than me, not in the whole galaxy.’

Kaidan tried a smile. It got there, or close enough; it was what it was.

He had to visit Shepard and he knew it. A thank you to his private address wouldn’t be enough. Kaidan eased out a cramp in his calf and wondered when the next headache would hit. It always did.

When he finished his report to Hackett two nights later, a salute at the end like a punctuation mark, Kaidan added, ‘Permission to speak out of turn, Admiral.’

‘Alenko,’ Hackett said, ‘we’ve seen each other at our lowest, haven’t we? Pulling guys half-starved out from underneath sheet metal and we don’t know if they’re crying or sweating or dead already until we get ‘em cleaned up. Your permission to speak ‘out of turn’ was granted when the first Reaper fell in London.’

‘I thought I’d take a day off—half a day,’ Kaidan replied. ‘And check in on Shepard. See how he’s doing with the transfer. I spoke to Dr. T’Soni yesterday and I hear the progress is…pretty incredible, considering where he was.’

‘There’s nothing Commander Shepard does that’s short of incredible.’ Hackett wiped the sweat off his face but he would’ve left it, Kaidan realized, if he hadn’t been covering up a shift in his expression, something he didn’t want Kaidan to see. ‘And I’m not one of those blindly devoted types, either. I’m not captain of the guy’s fan club. I’m just saying it like I see it.’

‘And I…don’t think I’d argue with you, sir,’ Kaidan said.

‘You sure as shit won’t, if you know what’s good for you,’ Hackett replied.

The thing was, Kaidan didn’t know what was good for him—but that really wasn’t a conversation you had with a superior officer, no matter how many times you’d seen him at his lowest in the past few months. They’d all been there, scraping below sub-levels, and now they were starting to pull themselves back up again.

Kaidan took a long walk through the zones, past the zoning hazards, the memorials that had appeared spontaneously along the streets of the Old Commons and the New Commons and everywhere in between.

Kaidan should’ve brought flowers with him, a card, some kind of _Congrats on getting out_ and _Sorry I stopped visiting you_ hybrid, but all the shops on the Citadel—or what was left of them, anyway—had been scanned for salvage, then boarded up. The balconies still weren’t stable. The rations market met every other day on easy-access and cleared grounds where volunteer soldiers and evac specialists and civilians waited in line with their IID—Invasion ID—cards for protein distribution.

There weren’t any flowers for Kaidan to bring. There was nothing to stand between him and Shepard in a restricted access ward on one of the lower levels, Alliance HQ set up in the fallout shelters beneath zero-two, a private sector Kaidan hadn’t been to before.

Down there, lights were dim. They would’ve been brighter if power wasn’t being rationed the same as proteins. Kaidan turned a few corners, headed past a few doors, and thought about how it’d been when he first showed up on Arcturus Station as a raw recruit, ready to check in with his TO.

He’d thought he’d never get the chance to understand, to learn, where everything was and why. There was no way it’d become second nature to him—only muscle memory kicked in fast, bolstered by routine, the constant drills making him the man he was today.

The door to Shepard’s room slid open with a hiss, Kaidan using his pass card to get in. Then, he stood in the doorway, not ready to cross over inside, feeling hungry and thirsty and not at all tired like he should have been.

‘Hey, Commander,’ Kaidan said. ‘How are you feeling?’

His voice managed to stay steady, composed, put-together, with the rubble cleared away. Maybe the framework was sparse, obvious it’d been reconstructed during a recent renovation, but it didn’t collapse. Kaidan only had to clear his throat once when Shepard looked up—scarred but shaved, blue eyes and stiff leg and not half as many bandages, even less than that. There was one around his elbow still but it was more like a brace, and he was wearing a simple Alliance t-shirt, comfortable, easy, above his fatigues.

‘Kaidan.’ Shepard paused—like he was the one who kept seeing ghosts. ‘…Okay, you got me. I’m surprised.’

‘I would’ve given you advance notice,’ Kaidan began. _But if I’d put it down in words, I wouldn’t have come, probably._ ‘But things just… They got away from me. I was passing by, and I thought I’d see how the hero’s doing.’

‘Huh.’ Shepard’s expression didn’t slip or fall; it never did. Honestly, he was too good of a soldier for that, and that could be traced all the way back to the first day they’d met—or to the first moment Kaidan realized there was no way you could know him and underestimate him at the same time. He wasn’t just another soldier, young and ready to prove himself, hard-headed and looking to bust some balls. He wasn’t like that at all, and he was an incredible…

He was an incredible guy.

‘I thought maybe it might have something to do with a little turian cruiser,’ Shepard said finally.

‘I…’ Kaidan wasn’t in a place where lying was possible, not to anyone but himself. ‘One of the guys on my team—Lieutenant Delgado. His daughter’s your biggest fan, it sounds like. He only just got news about her—she’s safe, in London, with her grandmother—and I guess I figured that maybe a turian cruiser put together by Commander Shepard himself…’

‘They’re going to put it on the news, Kaidan.’ Shepard didn’t look disappointed. He just looked like Shepard, and there were no other words to describe what that meant. Like early mornings, sore but comfortable, both of them stretching against each other; like grim shadows but also quiet, natural light; like stepping off the Kodiak and adjusting to current temperatures, Shepard’s face turned toward the sky and visible, for a moment, beneath the glare on his visor. Whenever Kaidan could see his eyes. ‘So long as she gets to a good home. So long as she manages to land somewhere nice, not to mention travel for a while. You know, I think that cruiser would like that.’

Only Shepard, Kaidan thought. But he’d been fighting against the weakness in his knees for weeks now. This wasn’t his lowest, and he stayed where he was.

‘Might make a guy nervous standing in the doorway like that for too long,’ Shepard said.

His eyes again—whenever Kaidan could see them he felt them, too. They were just like they’d been in London, clear and bright even in the ash that clogged the air, filling their mouths, settling over open wounds and stinging until there was nothing left to feel the pain.

They’d been breathing it out for days after, weeks, Chakwas doing lung scans to make sure they wouldn’t develop respiratory problems because of it.

They still could, though. There was always a chance—one of those things Shepard had proved by surviving, and there was a good side and a bad side to every possibility.

‘That an invitation, Commander?’ Kaidan didn’t tease him anymore than that—Shepard was the hero, and Shepard was the wounded soldier—before he stepped inside, the door hissing shut at his back.

‘Door’s always open, Major,’ Shepard replied.

It was better when Shepard called him that. Kaidan didn’t want to hear it, his name, with all the protocol of their first tour of duty together, and none of the warmth they’d found in each other three unpredictable years later. _Shepard_ , Kaidan would have replied, and it would’ve made it all so obvious—what he’d felt; what he was still feeling.

And that wasn’t fair. All the time Shepard had lost, the graybox he hadn’t asked for, the body that’d been rebuilt to specifications too many times to count—none of it was fair.

Kaidan didn’t blame him.

He couldn’t blame anyone.

‘You want to sit?’ Shepard asked. ‘I’d offer to get you a chair, but I don’t think it’s on my list of PT-approved activities. They’re going to want me in top condition to answer all of Allers’s questions without breaking a sweat, put in a few appearances at the summits… Can’t strain myself before then, now can I?’

There was a hint of humor in Shepard’s voice. Kaidan missed that—as bad as it usually was, old jokes with stilted punchlines that still managed to make Kaidan laugh.

He forced a chuckle and knew how bad it sounded, but Shepard had the decency—the training—to pretend it didn’t, eyes fixed on the far wall.

‘Sure miss getting fresh air and whatever passes for sunshine lately, though,’ Shepard added. ‘Except I hear it’s not all that pretty out there.’

‘It’s getting somewhere.’ Kaidan touched the back of a visitor’s chair, which were never all that comfortable to begin with, and wondered if he’d be able to stand up again after he sat down. He was always pulling himself back up out of something, but with Shepard in front of him, there wasn’t much room to complain. ‘Patching it up as much as we can. You know Garrus is in London right now with…’ Kaidan almost said _Vega_ and stopped himself. ‘Coats,’ he said instead. ‘He’s with Coats while Coats oversees the projects there.’

‘Yeah.’ Shepard’s fingers were stained; it took Kaidan a moment to blink the thought and the sight of blood from his mind and realize they were from paint and nothing more. Model ship paint, even, and half of one on Shepard’s bedside table, next to the other pieces and the glue the kit came with. ‘Hackett was telling me. Keeps me updated. Sounds like… Well, like a headache.’

Shepard looked at Kaidan after he said the word and Kaidan sighed. ‘Guess it must take up all the headaches, then,’ he said. ‘It seems like I’ve finally learned what too tired to get a headache feels like.’

‘So you’ve been on your feet since the final push, Kaidan?’

_Kaidan_.

‘Something like that,’ Kaidan said. ‘More or less. I learned the strategy from this guy I know… Stubborn as hell, but it was an honor to fight with him anyway. His name was Shepard—you know, I think you might’ve heard of him.’

‘A couple of times. He’s not that great, is he?’ Shepard’s voice had that old warmth to it, not the sleepy kind but the bad-joke kind, when he knew he was going through an old routine but actually, he kind of enjoyed it.

‘You look good,’ Kaidan said, still avoiding his name. What he meant was _you look great_ and also _I can’t look at you anymore_ , so he switched his focus to the model ship instead. ‘What’re you working on this time?’

‘Athabasca Class Freighter,’ Shepard replied. ‘Not too complicated and not too easy. You ever make these?’

‘Not… Not myself.’ Kaidan stopped himself from leaning forward, closer. ‘I always got the models, not the kits. Usually on my birthday. You know, my mom told me the whole collection’s still there in the old house—that it’s one of the only fleets that made it through the Invasion intact. Although I hear one of the shuttles is missing a part of the thruster right now. Fell off the desk, I guess.’

Shepard listened like the story was actually interesting. ‘Bet you Liara could dig up a part to replace it.’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan admitted. ‘But I don’t know if it’d be the same. Maybe I should just leave it as-is.’

‘You mean broken,’ Shepard said.

‘Something like that,’ Kaidan repeated.

That was the only catch-all phrase he could think of for the things he couldn’t explain, the things he didn’t want to feel. He rubbed his palm against his thigh and realized Shepard was watching, a scar on one of his knuckles that never had the time to heal.

‘Hey now, Commander,’ Kaidan said, ‘I’m not staring at your scars, am I?’

Shepard let out a breath, with a wry grin and a shake of his head and something else that was more than a shadow. _Something like that._ Something like _Shepard_ , Kaidan added, but if there was no name for it, there was no way to introduce himself to it, either.

‘Spent the whole afternoon staring at the one on Garrus’s face a couple of weeks back.’ Shepard flaked some paint off the corner of his thumb. Kaidan knew the impulse wasn’t about caring how it looked but the texture, the satisfaction in peeling something dry and dead from your skin. ‘I don’t know. I guess I like it. Think his face is the only one that could take a hit like that.’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘No kidding.’

‘If it happened to somebody else, though…’ The paint flicked off Shepard’s nail and was too light to fall right away, drifting to a wrinkle in his fatigues instead. It wasn’t like him. Shepard didn’t fidget. He was still sitting with a straight back like he was standing at attention, but his hands weren’t clasped behind him. They were up from and somehow that was personal. ‘Wouldn’t want it to happen to your face, for example.’

‘Kinetic shields.’ Kaidan was lost in the blue and gray camouflage until he managed to look away. ‘For when you aren’t made out of steel like a turian. Sure would be handy if we were, though.’

‘Guess I should’ve taken that advice on the final push in London I keep hearing so much about,’ Shepard said.

‘It was something,’ Kaidan replied.

_Something like that_.

‘Might be lucky,’ Kaidan added. ‘Not having to remember all of it.’

‘Is that what you’d choose?’ Shepard asked.

Kaidan could feel his arms, his legs, every bone in his body getting heavier. ‘No. I guess not.’

‘That’s what I thought.’ For a second, Kaidan thought he remembered the weariness of a man pushed past his limits, someone sharing a bed instead of a galaxy, someone brushing his teeth and making it to the couch and passing out seconds before his back hit the upholstery. Those things Kaidan wasn’t ever meant to see; those things he wouldn’t ever see again. ‘Hey, Kaidan—you hungry?’

Kaidan was always hungry.

‘Nothing to complain about, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Kaidan said.

‘I was thinking we could grab a bite to eat,’ Shepard replied. ‘It’s about lunchtime anyway, isn’t it?’

‘Chances are it is somewhere,’ Kaidan said.

When his stomach actually made a noise, Shepard looked up.

There he was, his eyes on Kaidan’s eyes, drawing out the hope Kaidan couldn’t keep himself from feeling. The hope that said it was more than grayboxes and memories, that told him they’d been more than circumstance and finally getting the timing right; the hope that was worse for a second than hours of despair.

Then, Shepard chuckled, looking away. Kaidan didn’t know what he’d been expecting, other than that he had to learn not to expect anything at all.

‘I’m guessing that’s a yes,’ Shepard said.

It was a yes. It usually was when it came to Shepard.

Kaidan couldn’t know what to expect—how Shepard was walking, if he needed a chair, if there was anything Kaidan had to do to help. Hovering was for shuttles only, Kaidan remembered Shepard saying once, when he’d been down in the med bay resting up for a change. And Kaidan had crossed his arms over his chest with a simple chuckle, leaning against the doorframe, shaking his head. _I know, Shepard, I know._

Shepard levered himself off the cot and stood. ‘Look, Kaidan,’ he said. ‘No hands.’

‘That’d be funnier if it couldn’t also be taken more literally,’ Kaidan replied. ‘How much of those hands are cybernetics right now, anyway?’

‘More of them than you can count with your fingers.’ Shepard held his ground—like holding the line—and even if his step forward was stiff, it was steady.

Kaidan didn’t need to hover. Hovering was for shuttles only. He figured he’d get the door instead, guest card heavy in his pocket, Shepard in that hoodie of his that reminded Kaidan not of dates on the Citadel but of meeting him—mostly by accident—on the Normandy. The way it smelled, whenever Kaidan kissed Shepard’s throat.

His mouth was dry. ‘I think I could use some coffee,’ he said. ‘That any good here?’’

‘About as good as it was on the Normandy.’ Shepard paused. ‘…It was still bad those three years in between, right? Don’t tell me I finally missed a decent line cook on my own ship.’

Kaidan shook his head, the good memories stirring in with the bad. ‘Some things never change, Commander,’ he said.

Maybe that was to make up for all the things that did. The sudden one, instead of the slow buildup in the gut and the chest, the shift of muscle and need between the ribs.

*


	8. VIII

Lunch turned out to be swiping a card Shepard had on him in the right slot on a vending machine, a unit that was as old school as it got, while protein drinks and a couple of bars dropped out. Kaidan bent to get them without thinking and Shepard said, ‘Now, I know it’s nothing fancy, but it’s bound to be better food than the Normandy ever saw.’

‘You know, I’ll take it,’ Kaidan replied.

Any docking bay in a meteor storm.

But it was more than that; meals were about the company for the most part, and Kaidan ate three of the protein bars before he realized he wasn’t even gagging. ‘Okay, so they’re a little stale,’ he admitted, ‘and they’re probably older than—they’re probably prothean at this point. But they’re actually the best thing I’ve had to eat in a long time.’

‘General rations are that bad, huh?’ Shepard asked. ‘And here they keep insisting I’m not getting special consideration.’

‘You saved the galaxy.’ Kaidan felt the ridges in the plastic bottle of protein-fortified water, uncolored, unflavored, unless you counted the subtle aftertaste. ‘And considering what you looked like when they brought you in here… I’d say the special consideration thing is kind of well-earned.’

‘Yeah—most people say that.’ Shepard’s braced elbow bent at an awkward angle but he got his drink to his lips and swallowed. Somebody’d shaved his throat—but a day ago, the stubble already starting to grow back, the guy already starting to look like he used to when he was pushing his second midnight in a row on no sleep. ‘Maybe they’re right. Hey, I hear you were serving with me back then, too. We were on the same squad for a while, weren’t we?’

‘You could look at it that way,’ Kaidan replied. ‘There was… I’m gonna be honest with you, Shepard. There was a break in the middle.’

Shepard’s face was all hard angles, all Alliance brass. He wasn’t questioning it, or thinking about it, or anticipating knowing more—at least, not as far as Kaidan could tell. And that was how it was supposed to be between two soldiers.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to be between two friends, two _something more_ than friends, instead of two people who were _something like that._

‘I guess you’re going to call me an optimist, Kaidan,’ Shepard said finally, ‘but something must’ve gone right if we ended up having each other’s backs again.’

Kaidan’s throat was still dry and also tight—something no twenty year-old protein water could fix. His eyes were dry, too, and it had to be the conditions in the air, red levels so high that a visor could keep a guy protected, not when he was working in the hard-hit zones around the clock.

Maybe, after enough time, Kaidan would go blind. He could only fight the process for so long before the grit and the grime and the floating debris formed a sort of cement over his eyes. Crazy how those things worked out, how the side effects seemed like a blessing when you least expected it.

Kaidan blinked. It cleared his vision but it didn’t give him any focus.

‘It was that crazy, huh?’ Shepard asked.

‘It was pretty crazy,’ Kaidan replied.

‘Hackett mentioned it. Said there was no way a soldier could imagine the kind of things he ended up having to see.’ Shepard wiped sweat off his temple. He’d also had a recent haircut, the buzz still new, and rough enough that it snagged on Shepard’s callused knuckles, making a sound louder than a whisper in a crowded room. ‘Then again, we’ve seen some pretty crazy things before, haven’t we, Kaidan?’

‘Pretty crazy,’ Kaidan repeated. ‘But…people always find a way of pulling through. Not just some people, either.’

‘Humanity.’ Shepard nodded. ‘…Talking like this isn’t going to help the proteins go down, is it?’

Kaidan’s were already churning heavy under his ribs and above his gut. There was no way they’d settle now. ‘Can’t exactly talk about the weather, though.’

‘You want to help me with that freighter?’ Shepard offered. ‘Kaidan, I could use an extra pair of hands. I always could.’

He looked so damn earnest. That was the whole problem. When Kaidan saw his eyes he was Shepard and no amount of memory loss, destroyed circuitry, rebuilt parts and synthetic tissues, could ever change that. He was the same guy who took Kaidan’s hand over a café table and gave it a squeeze—only now that hand had been replaced, cybernetic fingers with the same mobility as the ones he’d been born with, which back then they probably hadn’t been anyway.

_I lost Legion,_ Shepard had said one late, late night, while Kaidan was drifting in and out of sleep, training himself to be quicker to wake. Whenever Shepard got out of bed; whenever a nightmare made his muscles seize. _I lost Legion, and the last thing they— The last thing he asked me was if he had a soul._

Kaidan always wondered after that if he’d been dreaming. Shepard never mentioned it again and that meant it was gone now. Buried. Legion’s question; Shepard’s answer. The struggle that came between and the comfort of Shepard’s body when he spoke from the circle of Kaidan’s arms.

‘I should go,’ Kaidan said. ‘I’ve…got a squad that needs to get out there. You know how it is when you let a crew, even one you handpicked, run wild without you.’

‘Yeah.’ Shepard’s eyes were still bright, the color of sky over the bay, back when Kaidan was young and before he went off-world. Before the L2 implants, before the memories he’d made, no graybox to keep them all safe and destroy them when the system crashed under external pressures.

Starting over again. Clearing the air, cleaning the slate. It was what they were doing outside as well as underground, in the private sector, where Shepard was being kept under careful observation. Where some scientist, somewhere, _maybe_ , had that graybox on a desk, poking it now and then and coming to no conclusions. And asking, in the dark, held in the circle of somebody’s arms, whether or not that box was the answer to the question, something you fit into somebody’s heart instead of into their brain.

‘Fair enough,’ Shepard added. ‘Wish I could get back out there, though.’

‘You would,’ Kaidan said. ‘I mean, that’s… That’s just like you, Commander.’

‘I’m just like me, so I hear.’ Shepard looked away at last, although it didn’t make it any easier for Kaidan to breathe now that he had. ‘Although I’m starting to wonder if I’m the best judge of that.’

‘I think the question’s been asked before,’ Kaidan said. He stood and Shepard stood with him, the legs of the cafeteria chair scraping the floor. It was almost normal—as close to normal as they could get, more like a check next to the word sanity than anything else had been since the crash. ‘You know, we got stranded for a while—on this island. The Normandy had kind of a rough landing and it took a while to fix her up well enough to take off again, head back toward earth. And the terrain was… The whole place was practically untouched. If you got past the bugs and the heat, it might’ve been nice there.’

‘There are some soldiers that would have looked at that like a vacation, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

Down on that planet, for the five days they were stranded there and out of power, measuring their fuel, wiping their sweat, Garrus had said the same thing. _Well, let’s look at this like a lovely vacation,_ he’d told them, and Kaidan knew Shepard would’ve appreciated it. That he would have chuckled, tired but proud, looking out at the sunlight making the leaves glisten, sweat making his blues damp at the small of his back.

They would’ve done it together, at least, stripping off, drinking their water rations before bed, lying close enough that sticky skin was pressed to sticky skin. Sure, it wasn’t comfortable, but it didn’t have to be.

‘I’ll see you around, Commander,’ Kaidan said.

‘Don’t be a stranger,’ Shepard replied.

Back in housing, Riviera doing weapons inventory and prep, Delgado off on a private call with his kid, Kaidan caught up with his messages. The only thing anyone had to give anybody else right now was news—and if the news wasn’t so bad, there was no reason not to share it.

_Hey Mom_ , Kaidan wrote.

_It’s good to hear from you._

_How’s the fleet doing, anyway? Any more chipped thrusters?_

_I was thinking maybe you could give those old ships to some of the local kids—if there’s a program like that set up for donating the little things. A fleet that’s not deployed, even if wartime’s over, still isn’t a fleet at all._

_Keep safe, and I’ll call soon, when the lines are up again. There’s a chance this might bounce, I guess, but sending it’s something I have to do._

_We’re getting things done on the Citadel now. It’s slow and it might not be sure but at least it’s something._

_Miss you. Love you. And try to give those model ships a good home, all right?_

_Kaidan_

It cleared his head to put everything down like that and the surprising part was he wasn’t surprised. Riviera was done with the polishing and she was licking the guys at Skyllian Five; when she saw Kaidan look up, she waved him over. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but things usually go better on a squad when the commanding officer _doesn’t_ get his ass handed to him by his team while playing cards. Easier to respect a major that way.’

Riviera snorted, her way of laughing, and Delgado whistled like it was a salute, saying ‘Good one, Major. That’s a good one.’

Kaidan thought about his old ships, a collection he’d pictured himself showing Shepard one day. Taking him back to the house he could still think of as home, showing him a room that hadn’t been slept in for years, with a view from the balcony, and the skylight in the ceiling Kaidan used to love so much.

‘I always felt like it meant something,’ he would’ve said. ‘That looking up at the stars when they were so far away actually brought you closer to them. The harder you stared, the more you became a part of the sky. …Or something like that. Sounds crazy now, doesn’t it?’

It was one of those moments—imagined, but at least for a time it’d been possible—that Kaidan turned over and over in his mind before he slept, like a piece of a kit he didn’t know how to fit into place to keep momentum on building the miniature ship, half-assembled in front of him.

For all the big things Shepard had done, he was patient with the little ones. A good man. A good commander. But he was never going to see that fleet of Kaidan’s, and there was no point in holding onto it now for something that wasn’t possible anymore.

It would’ve been nice, Kaidan thought. It would’ve been really nice. And it would have brought everything full circle, into the circle of his arms. Kissing a neck with too much stubble, finally getting to find peace in a pulse.

‘Shower free?’ Kaidan asked.

‘If you can beat Ochoa to it,’ Delgado replied.

Kaidan still had some hustle in him. He grabbed his towel and headed for the door.

*


	9. IX

Two days later he only had two new messages. Lines were strained; priority communication had to get through faster.

 _Hey Kaidan_ , the first message read. _I wasn’t kidding about working on that freighter. Unless you’re too busy building something that counts for a whole lot more. Something the right size, instead of in miniature. Hackett said it was a good thing for me to see what it’s like feeling stir crazy now and then. Apparently it’s something ‘the rest of us’ have to deal with pretty often. You ever feel stir crazy, Kaidan?_

_Shepard_

The second message was from Mom.

_Kaidan— If there’s one or two of those model ships you’d like me to keep, speak now or forever hold your peace._

Kaidan had been planning on it—holding his peace, holding Shepard’s peace. Making things peaceful for both of them, and realizing how much smaller his old bed was now that he was bigger, now that he had Shepard with him.

He still had Shepard with him. He still felt bigger but that size made him feel smaller again, writing Mom back, telling her she could pick her favorite and give away the rest.

What he really meant was that she could pick Dad’s favorite. Kaidan had never stopped to ask what that was, just trying to play with the things in front of Dad without breaking them. No crash landings, no sudden explosions, a game called _no man left behind._

Sure, Kaidan had wanted—sometimes—to send a cruiser nose-first into the wall, to be the one who crackled with static and blazing fire, shouting about emergency evacuation being in effect, about the ship’s commander staying behind to get everybody onto the escape pods. But he might’ve gotten something wrong, a detail that’d make Dad frown because he knew better, and the older Kaidan got, the less appealing those explosions seemed.

The message to Shepard wasn’t as easy. _You sure Garrus wouldn’t be better for that kind of thing?_ was too pointed and, Kaidan admitted, it was mean, bitter, a place that exploded every day with a crackle of static and blazing fire. It was all shrapnel, all collateral damage, and now it was all the time.

Kaidan couldn’t kick it to the curb but he could kick it in the chest, which he did, and when it deflated it shrank so it wasn’t casting much of a shadow anymore.

 _I’ll see when my next day off is_ was too hopeful and too informal, too formal at the same time. It offered a vague promise—but vague promises were the worst kind of hope there was.

And when you could put hope into words and still lose track of it in the heat of the moment, all the other hopes in the crowd…

Kaidan rubbed the headache that was still building but not hitting, not yet. _I’m not sure I’d be much help, Commander,_ Kaidan began. After that, it was almost easy. _I might end up doing more harm to that freighter than good. If you need somebody to hold the rubber glue for you, though, I could probably pull that off. I heard on the morning update you’re going to be interviewed next week—Wednesday, right? Good luck._

He signed it K. Alenko, not so impersonal it meant goodbye, but it came close. And he hit send after, right away, so he didn’t have time to question it.

Shepard deserved an answer. He deserved that nice Alliance hospital with the old proteins that at least had some flavor, nearly impossible to chew but somehow easier to swallow. He deserved a pair of hands to help him with his Athabasca Class Freighter that didn’t also _always_ want to cup his face, rub his shoulders, tug on his white t-shirt with the blue Alliance insignia silk-screened over the heart, checking his body for scars and kissing each one. They couldn’t feel anything. They were dead tissue, no nerve endings anymore, maybe a twitch or two around the edges during deep space travel or sudden shifts in air pressure, but they wouldn’t respond to Kaidan’s touch, and that was okay. They didn’t have to. Kaidan needed to know where they were so he could know where they weren’t, and together that’d make up Shepard, against his palms.

Shepard, in his arms.

What Shepard didn’t deserve was the past he didn’t know holding on too tight to a future that could never be. Kaidan had too much integrity for that and Shepard had to heal on his own, without thinking he was cornered into promises he’d made before, ones locked in a graybox that’d been destroyed.

Liara had been there, holding Kaidan up one-shouldered on the ramp. It’d happened. It was real. At least until the people who could remember it were gone, another graybox lost—but that was actually a natural thing.

It happened to everyone. Maybe not this way exactly, but if Kaidan brought it up…

He didn’t want Shepard to try a thing because of guilt or somebody else’s expectations or pity. Shepard was alive and it was good to see him—now and then, with time after for Kaidan’s own periods of recovery.

Deep breaths, in and out. Kaidan sat on his bunk for longer than he should and that’d never fly in real Alliance training, much less field experience.

He fell into line before Riviera could file a report on her CO’s erratic behavior and his team saluted him as he passed by.

‘We’re gonna do some good today,’ he said. ‘We’re gonna fight like hell, but we’re gonna do it on our own terms—our way.’

‘Yes, sir,’ they echoed.

They were good people. A good team, good soldiers, and Kaidan wondered if Hackett had handpicked them because of their record. _Pity_. Doubt snuck in next to hope and set up camp at its foundations, chipping away at something way easier to shatter than the metal-alloy support beams they were sweeping, a residential complex that was nothing but a dome of sustainable, standard-grade materials rearranged into wreckage.

They were good people, but it wasn’t a good day.

Riviera found the krogan first and the smell hit them all second. When they extracted him, they found the boy underneath—in the krogan’s hold, eyes shut, so maybe he’d drifted off feeling liked he’d been rescued. And even if he had been, that rescue was too little, too late.

‘This one’s got an ID,’ Riviera said.

Kaidan stared at the krogan’s hump, strong enough that it hadn’t been crushed. Hell, it was possible they’d both just suffocated, faced with too much smoke, lungs slowing down and narrowing against each breath.

‘Write it up,’ Alenko said. ‘We’ll… I’ll call in Beta Team.’

Whatever promises those two had made each other—a kid and a krogan, unlikely allies in the last few seconds of the Reaper Invasion—it looked to Kaidan like they’d kept them. Then, Beta Team came with reusable body bags, snapped shots for their data files, and left as efficiently as they came.

‘What a fucking day,’ Riviera said.

Delgado whistled, but it wasn’t his usual appreciation, just a sad little note that sounded like a funeral. Being a CO meant looking at it that way—at least the bodies were found. At least somebody was saying goodbye.

‘We knew the score when we enlisted, Lieutenant,’ Kaidan said.

‘These aren’t the terms of war.’ Riviera shook her head. ‘These aren’t even the peacetime negotiations, either. They’re just...somewhere totally fucked up in between.’

Holding on against something bigger than anything you’d been, than anything you’d ever felt. Protecting something even when that something was bound to die right there, pressed by your arms into your chest.

‘They weren’t alone,’ Kaidan said. ‘And, you know, sometimes… I think that counts for more than we know.’

‘ _Damn_ it,’ Riviera replied, but it was Delgado who wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, then swiped at something more than sweat when he scrubbed his eyes.

Kaidan went to visit Shepard the next day around lunchtime, the long walk like an underground maze, or like one of those nightmares that kept you turning in on yourself, crossing old territory, lost and always trying to clear your vision so you could see more than an inch in front of your own nose. And always failing.

Kaidan’s vision didn’t pitch or blur but there were black-outs while muscle memory kicked in and took over, leading him to Shepard’s door.

It was shut. Shepard was sleeping. It wasn’t like him to do that in the middle of the day, but that used to be when there were new reports from the Council every hour. Always someone on the end of the line, listening to him now that there was so little he could do, and expecting him to do everything he’d promised at the beginning.

Sure, it made Kaidan mad. Even now. Even when he had no right to anger or even sadness—and certainly not pity. The most intimate emotion there was, neck and neck with love.

Kaidan remembered those long days, Shepard in that coma, chest rising and falling like the swell of the rubber bellows in a breathing machine. The more technology changed, the more certain staples stayed the same.

Something to rely on. Something to lean against. Something to fill the lungs and empty them out again so a guy didn’t have to concentrate on breathing.

Nothing was harder than that. And for some reason, everybody kept saying it was easy.

‘Next time, you should wake me,’ Shepard said, knuckling around his eyes instead of rubbing them directly. ‘…Iris modification. Apparently I lost my eyesight and most of my hearing for a while back there, so I’ve got to be careful I don’t tear anything loose. But seriously, Kaidan, wake me next time.’

_Next time, wake me._

‘Doctors never said anything about waking you,’ Kaidan replied.

‘Must mean it’s not all that important, then.’ Shepard looked at Kaidan instead of at the freighter by his side. It still didn’t have its wings, its thrusters assembled but not attached to the main body of the ship. Kaidan didn’t want to touch it and that left his hands totally empty—only holding onto nothing had to be better for a guy’s health than holding on to the wrong things. ‘Good to see you again, Kaidan. Garrus keeps coming by and he doesn’t even have the decency to let a war hero win at cards from time to time.’

‘Play Skyllian Five next round, not poker,’ Kaidan said. ‘Rumor has it you’re pretty good at that.’

‘Whatever they’ve said about me, it’s not true.’ Shepard held a hand over his heart, although Kaidan suspected the joke was more a failed attempt at a salute. ‘I’m as innocent as they come. Just look at this face.’

Kaidan could only think about how he was really, _really_ trying not to.

‘Besides, Kaidan, you’re making me wonder if there’s going to be a drill soon, with all that standing around at attention,’ Shepard added. ‘You’re a major now, though. I report to you, so… I should probably be asking what I can do instead of lying around in bed all day. …Sir. Any orders for your subordinate, sir?’

‘Let’s see that Athabasca Class Freighter,’ Kaidan said.

‘Thought you’d never ask, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied.

Being on one of the Search and Rescue squads—the SRS for short—took the same kind of patience as putting together a small-scale ship. Unearthing shapes out of pieces that didn’t make sense could be satisfying, when you didn’t find the worst case scenario on the compacted levels, more numbers to add to the death tolls, more names or images to put on one of the memorial walls.

Shepard’s hands were steadier than Kaidan’s. When they bumped knuckles or knocked fingers Kaidan couldn’t remember the times they’d done that on purpose because this…

This wasn’t the same.

Even with their heads bent close together. Even with Shepard breathing evenly enough Kaidan could have set his own by it—and did, unconsciously, the same way Shepard had admitted once he fell asleep easier when he made a conscious effort to keep Kaidan’s pace. Inhale, exhale—and a little bit of friction, until one rhythm slotted against the next, like Kaidan rubbing the space between Shepard’s thumb and his palm.

‘That enough glue?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Little more’d be even better,’ Shepard said.

Their foreheads brushed, Shepard’s deeper wrinkles—from pain, sleepless nights, all those damn messages, all those damn _awaiting your orders, Commander Shepard_ —and Kaidan’s, from the headaches and the grief and the love.

Kaidan spread the rubber glue on with the narrow tip and saw it glisten.

‘Now we need to get it on there quick, before the stuff dries out,’ Shepard told him. He held Kaidan’s hand as Kaidan held the wing as the glue held everything else.

But the thing was, only the parts with the rubber glue were going to stick together. Kaidan and Shepard, on the other hand, were going to let go sooner or later.

They did; Kaidan’s knuckles were warm and Shepard’s palms soft. Some of the old calluses had been replaced by new skin grafts. Blisters popping, burning, gloves torn off, Shepard staring down the end of the day and knowing he wouldn’t make it back…

‘That’s a full minute,’ Kaidan said.

‘And that’s why I needed you, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied. ‘My timing’s off. Can’t tell a minute from an hour sometimes.’

‘That sounds rough.’ Kaidan made sure to tighten the cap over the glue-tube so nothing inside would dry up. ‘You’ve been telling the doctors everything they need to know, right?’

‘Yes, sir, Major Alenko, sir,’ Shepard said. ‘Every day, right before I take my medicine. Who knows—someday they might even let me off for good behavior.’

‘You know this isn’t house arrest,’ Kaidan told him. Like Shepard didn’t know. ‘They’re just…trying to keep you long enough that you don’t go saving the world again before you’re ready.’

‘Yeah.’ Shepard reached for the glue-tube, thumb brushing Kaidan’s knuckles. ‘And maybe the next time, I can tell everybody about it.’

They knew about as much as each other, then. What happened on the Citadel, the moment, the second of victory against the Reapers. When they all fell—Kaidan had listened to those stories on the news, tight-lipped and tight-shouldered next to a simple radio, with the rest of the Normandy’s crew while the signal cut in and out, static crashing against it in waves.

The first waves Kaidan thought about now had nothing to do with water and everything to do with Alpha team strikes.

 _They just fell,_ one soldier said. They could hear that loud and clear. _They all just…fell down, just like that. We thought it was over for us—but then, it was actually over._

About the same time as the Normandy went through a fall of its own, Joker keeping them from nose-diving too hard, only a few broken bones and nerves already too rattled to think about one more near-death experience.

_Standing there, watching something finally big enough to defeat those bastards…_

Kaidan remembered sweat and tears, too, whatever he had left, dehydrated, blood lost and not enough on board for a simple transfusion, holding his hands together until his bruised knuckles were supernova white.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘You’re going to snap that paneling.’

Kaidan’s chuckle sounded like an old protein wrapper being crumpled up and tossed into recycle. ‘You’d probably get better help building this thing if you’d asked Wrex.’

 _Or Grunt_ , Kaidan added, a thought locked inside with a twist of his lips.

‘I know I already kind of told you about this,’ he added, gentler with the pieces now, ‘but, uh… After we got out of London, the Normandy crew—your crew—we managed to get ourselves stranded for a while on a tropical planet. A couple of the guys—’ James Vega, jaw harder than any of the Normandy paneling he was holding; that was who Kaidan meant, ‘—were saying it was like the vacation we never got. Totally…untouched by time, I guess. Untouched by any Reapers, anyway. Sun on the leaves, wind in your hair, rain a couple of nights… We took shifts under a tarp making sure nothing got into the parts the engineers were trying to fix. Donnelly and Daniels—‘ And Traynor, and Cortez, but Shepard wouldn’t know them, either, ‘—they worked practically around the clock on that ship, trying to get it back together so we could get back out there.’

‘Bet Garrus and Wrex challenged the native fauna in a battle of strategy on the one hand, strength on the other,’ Shepard said. ‘Wish I could’ve been there to see it.’

‘I don’t know, Commander,’ Kaidan replied. ‘Rumor has it you were doing some pretty important stuff of your own.’

Shepard’s hand slipped. He almost dropped a part of what Kaidan had come to understand was a fuselage and he reached out without thinking, helping Shepard catch it. Hands on hands, Kaidan’s knuckles white as the center of a supernova.

The trick to those was distance. The trick was time. It was how fast light traveled, what the human eye could see. Something that’d reached its tipping point years ago, collapsing and expanding and changing, but when you saw it, the whole thing was over already.

The trick was perspective.

‘I had a pretty good time today, Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘As far as lockdowns in private medical facilities go, I’d say this is one of my best.’

‘That kind of thing happen to you often, Commander?’ Kaidan asked.

He didn’t know who he was kidding; he knew the answer. Of course it did.

He thought about emailing Shepard that night, after their goodbyes, after Kaidan left him behind in his room and listened to the door slide shut and leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, with about twenty supernovae in his chest at the same time. It was just…seeing, feeling the explosions, even though they’d already come and gone. It wasn’t new pain. It was the old stuff, which took lightyears to reach their destination.

The trick was perspective.

*


	10. X

In three weeks, the crew under Kaidan’s command had managed to clear five zones. Delgado joked about Riviera being a synthetic herself with how she never got tired, and Riviera joked about Delgado being part krogan, and the time didn’t fly by or anything.

It just passed.

They listened to Shepard’s interviews, even gathered in the community courtyards to watch the broadcasts, projected onto tarp in their district on the New Commons. In some places, Kaidan had heard, there were walls still standing, and Shepard’s face flickered across them like an old billboard.

Kaidan crossed his arms, watching Shepard do the same. It was half comfortable and half awkward but, as always, it came off charming. You could recognize the impulse; in fact, while it was happening on the screen, it was happening to _you_ in real life.

Well—to some people, anyway.

‘I know everybody’s saying I did something that day for all of humanity,’ Shepard said, Allers holding up her omni-tool mic. The picture cut out sometimes, making it come through like a view of the dance floor under strobe lights, but the sound quality was the best it’d been so far. ‘And I’m proud of what I’ve done. Nothing could make me prouder. …Except for maybe telling my superior officers, soldiers just like me _still_ fighting to make the galaxy a better place for everyone, what exactly happened out here on the Citadel. Something pretty big, from the looks of it.’

‘Commander Shepard,’ Allers replied, ‘let me play for you some of the overwhelming number of messages we’ve received from all over the galaxy—people who want to thank you for saving not only their lives, but their _worlds_.’

‘You’re going to make me blush, Diana,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan’s eyes were as dry as his throat, as dry as the scorched earth in London, but the fires had already been put out. What was left was the rubble, what’d been burned down already. The explosion on the Citadel was over. A long time over, even, though apparently—not long enough.

‘…the model ship you gave my dad’s CO for me,’ one of the recordings was in the middle of saying. ‘I’m never going to let it crash.’

‘That’s— Hey, that’s my girl!’ Delgado pumped his fist in the air and let out a cheer instead of a whistle, and the crowd in the courtyard answered him. They were all cheering, hats in the air, Shepard’s name on their lips.

Kaidan took five, leaning against a wall marked _STABLE – CLEARED_ with the right amount of distance between it and the courtyard _._ Not too far; not too close. He tipped his head back onto the steel support beam and stared up at the sky, or what little he could see, breathing through the filtration mask he had on.

‘Seen it plenty of times on my old squad.’ As big as she was and as loud as she could be, Riviera could sneak up on you when she wanted to. ‘Guys like you. _Good_ guys. What you’ve seen—it eats you up, faster than you can eat your proteins.’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘You know, I’ve seen it happen, too.’

And not just in the mirror.

‘We’ve seen the worst this galaxy has to offer, haven’t we?’ Riviera pulled at a burn scab on the back of one knuckle, peeling dead skin off to give the raw, regenerated skin beneath some air. Even if the quality was low, you had to breathe something. You had to breathe eventually. ‘And some of the best. Mostly the worst, depending on how you look at it. The looting, the riots, the bastards trying to make a fortune on everyone else’s suffering… But it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, anyway. Just seems like more because of when it’s happening.’

‘Thanks, Lieutenant,’ Kaidan said.

‘Don’t thank me. I’m talking ‘cause the sound of my own voice makes me feel like kicking ass again. It’s not for you—no offense, Major. This is my _me_ time. You just so happen to be in my spot.’ Riviera’s grin involved clenched teeth, something as pissed off as it was determined. ‘All I’m saying is, when future generations look back on this mess to figure out what they did wrong and maybe, _maybe_ what they did right, it’s not gonna be the same. It’s not gonna be anything like this.’

‘And that’s a good thing?’ Kaidan asked.

‘It’s something, anyway,’ Riviera replied.

There weren’t any stars visible through the smog to watch, nothing to look up _at_ , but that didn’t mean there was nothing to look forward to.

‘That Commander Shepard sure is something, though. Even heard he’s got an honorary krogan quad.’ Riviera shook her head, snorting. ‘Some people. I’m not star-struck like Delgado or holding this torch for the guy like you are, but he’s all right.’

‘Yeah.’ Kaidan licked his dry lips. ‘It’s that obvious, huh?’

‘Maybe I’m just real perceptive,’ Riviera said. ‘Except I’ve been told I’m about as subtle as a krogan in a commemorative laser sculpture shop, so that’s probably a bullshit explanation. Guy’s been through a lot; hell, sometimes I ask myself if I’d choose not remembering the shit I’d seen instead of remembering it all the damn time.’

‘Me too,’ Kaidan said.

They didn’t have anything else to say after that, nearby cheers rising now and then to the clouds, where they got stuck and silenced before they reached the sky itself.

If Kaidan was being that obvious about the fires that were still burning, he figured the next morning, then he couldn’t head back there—to meet Shepard after one of his own meetings, an interview or an hour of PT. The pieces of the puzzle were sections of a routine that Kaidan didn’t know the way a squadmate would, the way he didn’t anymore. Kaidan hadn’t been given clearance for that information.

He hadn’t given himself clearance.

When Alliance switched Kaidan’s team from search and rescue to zoning patrol, they spent a lot of time standing around watching shipments come in, guarding the rations facility, busting hungry kids and soldiers gone rogue, mercs and renegades and whoever else went after the goods on distribution day.

‘We’ll have an open market,’ Hackett said. ‘…Someday. When we can trust the people coming not to go food-crazy. But you know what I miss the most, Alenko?’

‘No, sir,’ Alenko said.

‘The goddamn air conditioning units,’ Hackett replied. ‘I’m sweating incendiary rounds, going through more uniforms in a month than I used to in a year.’

‘Might look into getting someone to follow you around and fan you with a datapad,’ Kaidan suggested. ‘…Sir. All it’d take is signing off on the right paperwork.’

Hackett told him he’d let that one slide, but only because it was as decent an idea as it was damn funny. And it was important to share a laugh together once in a while—even while sweating incendiary rounds.

Yeah. Kaidan could agree with that. He stood in the sun waiting for his shift to be relieved and the hunger, which was bone-deep by now, was what kept the headache at bay. Like his body couldn’t decide on what to feel the most, and scrapped all those feelings for spare parts that’d keep him running day to day to day.

Just after a week into the new patrol, Commander Shepard came to visit the rations facility. Allers was with him, a smaller network crew, a couple of Alliance soldiers looking like they didn’t know whether to keep to their guard duty or ask for an autograph.

‘Major Kaidan Alenko,’ Shepard said. ‘…Unless you’ve been promoted again without telling me?’

‘Commander,’ Kaidan replied. He straightened, saluting, armor muffling the sound of his elbow joint creaking whenever it bent. ‘It’s an honor, sir.’

‘Don’t mess with an old soldier, Kaidan.’ Shepard was somewhere between smiling for the camera and warm for a friend, tired for the rest of his life. He wasn’t anywhere close to how he sounded when it was the two of them alone in his cabin, sharing a drink, knees bumping, both of them half-hard but enjoying the wait—when they were in charge of it, or at least in charge of when it ended. ‘I mean, if we’re still playing—at ease.’

That’d never happen again, Kaidan thought. ‘You’d give my guys a real boost if you told them to keep up the good work, Commander. Riviera, Delgado, Booker—and Ochoa, but he’s getting fitted for a new visor today. He won’t hear the end of it, missing you like this.’

‘Some guys have all the luck,’ Shepard agreed. ‘Sure. Lead the way, Major.’

Delgado thanked him for the ship and Riviera shook his hand maybe too hard—or maybe not. Maybe what Shepard needed was to be treated the same as he ever was, before his body’d been rebuilt a second time. All the questions they had about what made a man, what really made him who he was, memories and emotions and experience and choices…

That could be lost in a graybox at the center of an explosion big enough to save the galaxy. Shepard’s voice was the same, his haircut the same, the way he came at a handshake the same. Not flanking it or meeting it head on, but being a vanguard about the whole thing, quicker than he was direct.

‘I’m never washing this glove, Commander Shepard,’ Bunker said, only half-joking.

‘That might make for one dirty glove—Bunker, right?’ Shepard replied. ‘Lieutenant Bunker. Remind me not to shake your hand the next time we see each other, unless you aren’t wearing any gloves.’

They had a better laugh over that than anything Shepard and Kaidan had shared over a model ship. Kaidan had to stop counting the days since they’d spent any time together. He had to stop counting. He’d stopped counting already.

‘Good to see you again, Kaidan,’ Shepard said, on his way back to his shuttle.

‘You too, Commander,’ Kaidan replied.

‘We should do it again sometime,’ Shepard added.

That torch. Still burning, Kaidan thought, even after the fires had been put out.

‘Hackett’s been keeping me pretty busy, Commander,’ Kaidan said. ‘Slacking off on guard duty… That’s not something the Citadel can afford from its soldiers. The people here deserve everything we can give them. They were the center. They were hit the hardest.’

‘Have to honor the people tough enough to make it through something like that,’ Shepard agreed. ‘Every time you think this galaxy can’t surprise you any more, somebody goes and proves you wrong.’

He was back to Allers newsbytes and packaged clips; Kaidan had no doubt he’d be hearing that line on the news tonight along with everybody else who’d tuned in.

That relatable mix of knowing and not knowing, of being in the center but being able to move on. Shepard had that. He was everybody, or could’ve been anybody, but to Kaidan…

He was somebody else.

At least he wasn’t nobody at all.

‘I’m just saying, Kaidan, if you ever get some time off, Liara keeps sending me these kits to work on.’ Shepard’s chuckle was also something he’d put on for Allers and the weekly video chats, face projected ten feet wide and even taller, the perspective all wrong, too much of a close-up that was still too far away. ‘I don’t know where she gets them, and I’m starting to think if she could find restoration materials as well as she finds build-it-yourself miniature cruisers, we’d be set.’

‘Anything’s possible,’ Kaidan said. ‘…And if anyone’s living proof of that, it’s you, Commander.’

‘I don’t know if the look works for me,’ Shepard replied. ‘You know, I’d feel more comfortable out here, suited up on guard duty like you and your squad.’

Allers was taking it down, of course, camera rolling on the moment—Shepard’s dedication, his devotion, how not only could he have been any one of Alliance’s finest but that was all he _wanted_ to be. It was all he thought about, or all he knew.

‘…But I guess I’ll have to submit that petition to Hackett for approval,’ Shepard concluded. ‘And hope he gives me a more positive answer than you did, Kaidan.’

‘Truth is, I’ve seen one too many foil-wrapped rations,’ Kaidan said. ‘When you know a good place we can get a steak sandwich, let me know.’

‘I didn’t know you liked steak, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

Maybe, after all this, Kaidan would lose his appetite for it. ‘Now and then, Commander.’

‘Major Alenko,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan straightened. ‘Commander Shepard.’

It was the first time he’d said the name out loud since he’d told himself the sound of his voice when he said it would’ve given everything away. Shepard could be thick sometimes, absolutely, but he wasn’t all hard skull and nothing inside. It’d taken so much longer to come to a place of understanding, to figure out what they were looking for—and part of that was on Kaidan but they’d pushed past that. And Shepard wanted to. He wanted to push. He wanted to hold on.

Except that was in wartime. When everything they’d built was being destroyed. When the end was so close on their tails it was sucking up fuel ejections from their thrusters.

When Shepard was at his loneliest; when there was nobody calling on him to save the next planet; when it was just the fish in the tank and the bad music playing over the speakers. And when Kaidan came in to shut it off, Shepard sat on the edge of the bed. Instead of staring at the fish tank, he watched as Kaidan look off his own set of blues—piece by piece, until he was in his boxers; second by second, until he turned around; inch by inch, until he’d pulled down his boxers. And moment by moment, they were close enough to fill the room with light and warmth and private sound, Shepard’s quickening breaths louder against Kaidan’s ear than the bubbling of the water filter in the fish tank, or the silence that swallowed everything else, the moan Kaidan _didn’t_ swallow to spite that silence.

He heard it again on the prerecorded broadcast that night, and so did everyone. Countless people, human and turian, asari and salarian, drell and krogan, listening to the same story. The same voices.

_You know, I’d feel more comfortable out here, suited up on guard duty like you and your squad, Major Alenko._

_Commander Shepard._

It was Kaidan’s voice speaking the only name he thought about these days. The guys on level zero-seven, his team and Sullivan’s team and Kojima’s team, were all clapping him on the back when he walked in.

It wasn’t about respect. It was about this idea that a name could be shared and then it wouldn’t feel as small as it really was.

If everybody heard you say a thing, they figured you were somebody worth listening to.

‘Should’ve taken the Commander up on that offer, Major,’ Riviera said, heading for her side of the dorm. ‘But then, Alliance policy on second chances… What the hell is that, anyway? The way I see it is they tell you to deal with an eventuality by preventing it in the first place.’

‘If anything, Commander Shepard’s proved nothing’s out of our hands,’ Kaidan replied.

‘Huh. They should have you on those recordings next, Major,’ Riviera said. ‘You sound good. Exactly what we need to hear to stop thinking about how fucked up everything is.’

Kaidan spent the night remembering the aquarium VI Shepard installed, how he went in there once to change it out. ‘Defective,’ Shepard said. ‘Hope that’s not a sign.’ But he didn’t really believe that.

He didn’t really believe in signs.

Shepard came out of the tank with his rolled-up sleeves wet and Kaidan had undressed him, kissing his throat until the pulse skipped out of steady time. He left a mark with his mouth but it was low enough that Shepard could cover it up with his stiff blue collar when he got dressed again in the morning, something Kaidan never helped him with. He wondered—now, not then—why it was so much easier to take those things off instead of to put them on.

It was Shepard’s life, Shepard’s second chance. He was lucky to be alive and Kaidan wasn’t going to keep him from living.

*


	11. XI

Liara came to the Citadel for the summit. She left Kaidan a message because Kaidan had been on his feet all day, escorting the rations distribution vehicle—the RDV—through the Citadel zones in preparation for the talks.

He would’ve said it was dark by the time he got back to housing but it was always dark, just varying shades, while the New Council—senators and representatives for all the races, laymen and scientists and Alliance officials and the new head of C-Sec—went over the proposed air improvement plans. The pros, the cons. The shoulds, the shouldn’ts.

How many more masks they were going to have to send out when a new shuttle of volunteer soldiers landed. How many more masks they _could_ send.

Kaidan could see the lights in the distant towers on his way back. The Citadel wouldn’t go to sleep for the next forty-eight hours—or longer, if somebody decided they needed to filibuster.

‘It’s good to hear from you again,’ Liara’s message began. ‘…Although I suppose, technically, you’re the one hearing from me. But I’m sure it _will_ be good to hear from you again, once I do.

‘I’m here officially as a consultant and I’m sure that’s going to keep me as busy as ever, but I’ve found I can always make time for Shepard. Any of us would say the same—you know that.

‘Now, I tend to get frustrated with people who leave long voice messages for me without getting to the point at all, much less right away, but the rest, I’m afraid, was sent encrypted. It’s for your eyes only, and contains sensitive information about everyone’s favorite commander.

‘In some ways, it’s a wonderful thing to know that Alliance has been transparent—as transparent as it can be—about the memory loss he’s suffered. It humanizes him, don’t you agree? The idea that we’ve all lost something so important to us, that even the heroes or especially heroes pay the price to save the day. If it hadn’t been such a powerful message, I doubt anyone would know.

‘Yet, somehow, I haven’t been able to consider myself cynical, not at all. If anything, I’ve turned into even more of a hopeful idealist. Let’s try and make that Shepard’s legacy, Kaidan. I’ll do my best, and I know you’ll do yours. You always do. Until next time.’

It was only when the message was over that the illusion of being calm and comforted faded. It took a while—Liara was good at that tone, at helping people believe they really were going to be okay—to wear off, but then Kaidan was left with private quarters and a private message.

When he opened it up, the beam of orange light from his omni-tool falling across his lap and spilling onto the floor, he was reading orders issued to all of Shepard’s squadmates during the Reaper Invasion about Shepard’s memories, his situation. About phasing the people in his life back into his life without making their galactic hero feel like he’d served his time and still lost everything.

There were scheduled sign-ups for meeting with him, dates slotted into an interactive calendar, and a list of topics to discuss. A list of topics not to discuss.

How to make something messy neat again. How to clean up the rubble. Even that would’ve been easier than sitting down across from Shepard to ‘fill him in’ on the years he’d missed.

For the teammates he wouldn’t have known on sight, there was reintroduction protocol. Kaidan felt like he was going to be sick but his body still couldn’t manage it. He still felt nothing, absolutely nothing at all.

‘Sorry,’ Kaidan said, after punching in the right number. ‘I know it’s pretty late.’

‘And yet we’re _both_ up,’ Liara replied. Even if she was closer than usual, she didn’t sound close at all. ‘I take it you received my message?’

‘And the attachment. It’s… That’s some heavy stuff, Liara.’ Kaidan didn’t lean back or get more comfortable. That didn’t exist on legs tired from standing but glad to be standing all the same, a body that kept moving because the alternative was nothing.

‘I know it is. Still, as difficult as it’s bound to be, I do think we should respect him that much, shouldn’t we? To fill in some of the blanks, whatever we can. I’m sure it can’t be easy.’ Liara paused. ‘I even suggested I might be able to communicate with him mind to mind and see if the damage there is…not entirely synthetic. If any of it can be, for example, reversed.’

‘Look for a backup drive?’ Kaidan asked. ‘A…backup of a backup?’

‘The chances _are_ slim,’ Liara admitted. ‘But certainly Shepard has taught us to widen those margins through sheer stubbornness.’

‘Good thing we don’t have gray boxes of our own to lose,’ Kaidan said.

‘Just like Shepard.’ Liara’s next pause was longer and it gave Kaidan time to think about how awful he sounded, how selfish he was being. It wasn’t about him, he repeated. Back and forth, in and out, like breathing. It wasn’t about him. Shepard was the one who… Shepard was the one. ‘The human brain is a fascinating storage device all on its own, without any modifications. Even if the good memories were to return to someone, who’s to say they’d be accurate at all? With one piece removed, the entire system itself would change to accommodate… That’s becoming a tangent already, isn’t it?’

‘It’s good to hear from you, though,’ Kaidan said.

‘You sound tired,’ Liara told him.

‘I might just be.’ Kaidan rubbed his forehead, pressing down on the skin and the wrinkles in the skin just so his bone would feel it. ‘So Alliance shot down the asari mind-search, huh?’

‘Something like that.’ Kaidan thought he could detect the smallest of sad smiles in Liara’s voice. Either that, or he was projecting his own sad smiles onto everyone. ‘I would fix it—I’d fix it all, if I could. But I suspect I’d spend much of my life run as ragged as Shepard was, that last year. And by the end of it, who’s to say I wouldn’t have lost all my friends?’

‘Shepard hasn’t…’ Kaidan swallowed. ‘Garrus still visits him, right?’

‘All the time,’ Liara said. ‘And I have, too, when I can. When I’m not digging up artifacts or discussing salvaging certain technologies that can’t even be mentioned on this encrypted line. And Hackett sees him, of course. But I know he _does_ mention you. He knows something’s happened—a single year in this galaxy, Kaidan, is too much for even a matriarch to understand.’

‘I can’t make things more complicated for him,’ Kaidan said, the closest he’d been to honest in months.

‘Then I suggest you don’t,’ Liara replied. ‘It sounds to me as though you need some sleep. And I, too, am all tuckered out.’

Kaidan couldn’t help chuckling—over how normal the conversation felt and how normal was about perspective now too. What they were used to. The way a simple word could seem like a joke because of where and when it showed up. ‘Tuckered’s just… Have you ever thought about how the word sounds before?’ Kaidan asked.

‘We clearly need sleep,’ Liara said.

Kaidan didn’t sleep—not much, not anymore. He got enough shut-eye to keep his body running but the rest was spent awake, living through dreams he couldn’t have.

Shepard, kissing him back, palms against Kaidan’s jaw, holding him. Letting Kaidan in, too, that way he liked; how his lips parted against Kaidan’s tongue and how his shoulders shivered when Kaidan slipped it past them. They kissed so well back then, in what seemed like somebody else’s lifetime, something Kaidan had read on the extranet or seen in a movie theater. They really worked together, mouth covering mouth, Shepard’s callused fingers below Kaidan’s ear, tickling the lobe, or at his pulse, shaping the natural lines of his stubble. Massaging his shoulders from the front like a cat getting comfortable on a lap, and the least Kaidan could do was hold him after. Protect him. Fall asleep with both their heads on the same pillow.

Even now, they could have made it work. Kaidan could find the balance if the balance was for Shepard, being gentle enough without being too gentle. They could treat each other like they weren’t actually broken and after a while of believing, they might just wake up one morning to the realization that it was true.

But out of everything that’d been lost, that krogan holding onto the human kid, strangers and friends who never made it out with _any_ of their memories…

Being ungrateful was being selfish, or crazy, or human—and desperate. Pathetic, too. Not exactly admirable.

Shepard’s graybox had been destroyed. Kaidan wondered, before he fell asleep, if the same thing could be said about core values, like a soldier’s morals, or his integrity.

Morning came, gray as gray matter or gray boxes. The usual aches and pains came with it, Kaidan doing his stretches, rubbing some balm into his elbow, not too much all at once so it’d last. A little every day was better than blowing everything all at once, feeling great for one moment and terrible for the rest.

Then, alone in his bunk, he checked the sign-up schedule. According to its records, James Vega’d been the first to choose a slot, having learned from Shepard—maybe—that it wasn’t always about the beginning or the end. Sometimes, what mattered most was how you handled that uncomfortable time right there in the middle.

Structure. Order. Stipulations and regulations and proscriptions to match the prescriptions.

The framework would be good for them—for Kaidan, who wouldn’t step outside of it once he knew what its boundaries were. And if not stepping outside of it meant not making Shepard’s future collapse in on itself, not making him feel obligated to reciprocate the promises of another man with a few more memories, then it was the right way to rebuild.

Even if putting the pieces back together on a person wasn’t exactly like putting the pieces back together on a landscape. But the principal of setting reinforcements down next to shaky foundations was, surprisingly, pretty much the same.

Kaidan signed up for the second day. He wasn’t the first—he’d never expected to come first—and Garrus would probably be there then, anyway. Liara could go after and the rest would sort itself out, while Kaidan worked private guard duty for the VIPs of the summit.

‘One of many to come,’ Liara’d said. ‘Some people restructure with their hands. Others attempt the same things with their words. Oddly enough, I find both to be equally successful.’

‘Not equally unsuccessful?’ Kaidan had replied.

And Liara had repeated what she often did: that she maintained hope. That it had been Shepard’s most valuable gift, no matter what had truly happened on the Citadel.

Kaidan had a feeling there were techies hard at work trying to figure that out, too. Digging through all the recording devices that were left, trying to grab the memories out of those boxes—maybe while Shepard’s chip was forgotten in a vacuum-sealed lockbox, waiting for somebody to remember it was there, too.

‘Sometimes,’ Coats had said during one of his more popular speeches addressing London, ‘it’s not about how we fix things. It’s that we keep trying. And while we’re trying, we’re moving—not stuck in the rubble, just cleaning up as we go along.’

Kaidan checked his weapon. He stood on one side of the doorway and Riviera on the other. Hours of standing every day was harder on the body than hours of digging through collapsed buildings. Kaidan kept his eyes on the wall in front of him and didn’t, _didn’t_ think about Shepard.

Not until Shepard passed by, anyway.

Kaidan hadn’t even felt him walk up—he knew someone was coming by but he didn’t know who that someone was, and maybe that meant something, that he wasn’t able or wasn’t trying to pick Shepard out anymore.

Maybe all it meant was that Kaidan was tired, thinking of people in categories instead of faces and names.

‘I told Hackett I’d probably be more useful to him on guard duty, myself,’ Shepard said, that hope Liara’d been talking about coloring his eyes like Liara’s sad smile had colored her voice. ‘But I don’t know if he bought it. Said I shouldn’t slack off out here, and that if he had to listen to all the talk, then he wasn’t going in there alone.’

‘Glad to see you up, Commander,’ Kaidan replied. ‘You’re… You’re looking good.’

‘Am I?’ Shepard cleared his throat, nodding to Riviera across the way. ‘I don’t know about that. It’s taking me long enough, that’s for sure.’

It didn’t feel like it’d been that long, but when Kaidan tried to quantify it, he realized it also felt like it’d been years. ‘A couple of months,’ he said. ‘That’s not so bad. We can’t all be back on our feet in days like the turians.’

‘Some turians seem to think we should.’ Shepard saluted a passing senator and Kaidan did the same, one after the other. Another rhythm they were attuned to—only it was one they shared with countless soldiers, the ones who’d made it through the war. ‘But they’ve got standard’s so high even they might miss the shot. You been stationed here all day?’

‘Since zero five hundred,’ Kaidan replied.

Shepard shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s you all over, Kaidan. It’s good to know you haven’t changed. Nothing like Garrus’s face, for example.’

‘We all have scars,’ Kaidan said. ‘Just…some of them are more impressive than others, I guess.’

Shepard almost chuckled at that, the sound warm and private and real, and Kaidan felt the headache come closer than it ever had—the potential, the gravity, but also the force that was holding it back. Like some of that wire netting they used to contain a wall before it crumbled, stretched from solid beam to solid beam.

Eventually, Kaidan thought, those beams were going to warp or even snap. And there wouldn’t be anything to break their fall.

‘That was pretty deep, Kaidan. If Diana heard you, she’d be packaging the clip for tonight.’

‘I think it’d sound better coming from you, Commander,’ Kaidan said. ‘So it’s yours, if you want to use it.’

He made the mistake of looking at Shepard—not closely, but closer than he had been. The lines on his face, the scars taut under his cheekbones, leaner and sharper than ever but younger, too. Like dying once put the years on and dying twice took them off again. Anyway, he’d found some kind of balance. And, of course, there were his eyes, blue and clear and brighter in the hallway than they had any right to be—brighter than the neon lights that Kaidan once used to search for color in his skin.

Shepard had the scars on his hands but that was all healed now, or almost done healing, and the doctors looking after him, the nurses… They deserved their own medals of honor, their own ceremony, a soldier shaking their hands one by one with a _thank you_ that sounded like his throat was closing up, like those were his dying words and he was still managing to keep the thinnest net of control around them before the cave-in.

‘Hey,’ Shepard said. ‘You want to go somewhere after this? Off hours,’ he added. ‘Hackett’s orders are, I can’t leave the grounds without an escort, but who’d be better for that than Major Kaidan Alenko?’ Shepard paused, waiting, and Kaidan thought he got it.

‘Still not promoted,’ he replied. ‘So you’re good. We’d…have to submit the request, Commander, and chances are they won’t get back to it until next week at the earliest.’

‘Maybe I could call in a few favors,’ Shepard said. ‘I’m guessing you won’t be moving from this spot unless you’re chasing a hostile?’

‘Even then,’ Kaidan admitted, ‘I’ll probably be moving slow enough you wouldn’t have much trouble catching up to me.’

Shepard chuckled again. He sounded good, really good, better than he looked at some angles—not in terms of a close-up, but this close, live and in person. More skin grafts than skin, sure, but it held together, and Shepard was underneath it all. Those eyes…

Nobody could recreate them. It was him. It’d always been him.

‘Then I’ll meet you here,’ Shepard said. ‘Don’t make any other plans.’

‘And here I was thinking of going to catch the latest Fleet and Flotilla at the Cineplex.’ Kaidan waited for it, a crooked grin that meant Shepard was thinking, _of course you like Fleet and Flotilla better than you like Blasto, Kaidan._

‘You know me,’ Shepard said. ‘I’ve always been more of a Blasto fan, personally, but I never fell asleep during a Fleet and Flotilla sequel, either.’

‘They put too many explosions in after the first one,’ Kaidan replied. ‘Trying to be too much like Blasto, I think.’

‘I’ll see you later, Kaidan,’ Shepard said, saluting, Kaidan saluting too, and Riviera doing the same on the other side of the doorway.

‘Don’t let Delgado’s daughter hear about this,’ Riviera said, once they couldn’t hear the sound of Shepard’s footsteps or see his shadow. ‘I’m pretty sure she’s thinking that model ship was a proposal and they’re gonna get married in the spring.’

‘Focus on the detail, Lieutenant,’ Kaidan said, and Riviera’s solid _aye, aye, sir_ was enough to make him proud.

*


	12. XII

It was almost twenty-one hundred when Shepard came back, two minutes before Kaidan was officially off the clock. Riviera was on escort duty, taking the new turian primarch back to temporary living facilities for the visiting dignitaries, and Kaidan was…

Waiting for Shepard. He had years of practice, so he should’ve been better at it by now.

He showed up, escorted by a soldier who introduced himself as _Lieutenant Mullins, sir, an honor, sir_ , and Shepard told him _at ease, soldier_ , the old exchange like a favorite pair of shoes, as comfortable as old denim or fatigues. ‘Your service today was appreciated,’ Shepard said. ‘Now go get some rest, since tomorrow’s always bound to be longer than today.’

‘They’re not letting you and Garrus together during these conferences, are they?’ Kaidan asked.

Shepard’s mouth—his full mouth, that always let Kaidan’s tongue slide into it—went crooked again, his new, scarred version of a grin. ‘I’m not usually so bad at playing my cards close to the chest.’

‘I take it you got clearance?’ Kaidan said, not thinking about knowing Shepard better than he should, better than Shepard thought.

‘Even brought the pass so you’d know it’s legitimate.’ Shepard held out a datapad and Kaidan took it, the small things passed between them that didn’t matter anymore, not even when fingers brushed fingers, the tips against the knuckles.

There it was, Hackett’s clearance, a curfew, and what Kaidan knew was a coded message from Hackett while he signed off on the request—thinking _Don’t fuck this up, Alenko,_ but trusting that he wouldn’t.

It was an important detail. Off the clock, still on the books. Kaidan’s legs started moving like they knew the way.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Where to? Anyplace in mind?’

‘I wasn’t thinking of one,’ Shepard admitted. ‘I told Hackett it might be good to get some fresh air—I haven’t seen him laugh like that in years.’

_Literally_ , Kaidan thought. ‘He could use it,’ Kaidan said.

They rode one of the loading elevators up to ground level and put on their filtration masks before heading out. The Citadel used to be as bright during late-night hours as it was during the day but now there wasn’t that much to go by, only the low-energy checkpoint posts in place.

‘Brought a flashlight.’ Shepard swung it up and switched it on. ‘Figured we could use it. Checked it out regulation too, Kaidan,’ he added, ‘so don’t make that face. I can show you the sign-out form, if you want to get official.’

‘No, Commander,’ Kaidan said. ‘I think we’re good.’

The pale beam spread out in front of them, leading the way. Now and then someone else’s crossed the path it made, brief intersections before veering off into another part of the darkness.

It wasn’t even that nighttime hours were more dangerous than daylight. It was just more difficult to see the danger, and most of the looting—what Kaidan and his team had worked so hard to prevent—was done after curfew, private teams breaking into boarded-up storefronts without having to worry about being seen.

Alliance did the same thing, funding full-scale sweeps of the commercial areas that might have valuable goods to salvage—only they were collecting, not scavenging.

There was a fine beam of light intersecting the two, keeping them apart on principle.

‘It must’ve been something,’ Shepard said. ‘When the Catalyst was activated—when the whole place went up. Hard to believe anyone could survive something like that.’

Kaidan was sticking close; he had to, since Shepard was his responsibility, and if they didn’t run into one of the black market gangs that’d gone underground until the pressure eased up… Then they might find themselves in as much hot water if a soldier passing by on patrol recognized _the_ Commander Shepard, checking his after-hours permit for confirmation.

Kaidan couldn’t presume to know what Shepard wanted, but he knew enough to guess _that_ wasn’t the night he was looking to have.

Right then, it seemed Shepard was content to walk nowhere with only a beam of light a couple of inches in front of his boots to guide him. No direction. No plans. They weren’t making choices.

Kaidan cleared his throat and said, ‘Yeah. I wasn’t there, though, so I couldn’t tell you.’

‘Turns out I couldn’t tell you, either,’ Shepard replied.

Without the clean white walls of a room in the ICU, the harsh halogen strip lighting that turned every partitioned area into a sterilization chamber, Kaidan couldn’t see every expression Shepard made and every line on his face as though he was under a microscope, a sharp-focus heavy-zoom rifle lens. For a while, Kaidan could think about his face instead, the curve at the corner of his mouth whenever Kaidan let himself in, drink in hand, knowing it was for the best, knowing it was all they had.

‘Well,’ Kaidan said, ‘I guess that makes two of us.’

‘I guess it does.’ The warmth in Shepard’s voice was like a beam of light cutting through the darkness, and Kaidan almost reached out for it with an echo of the same warmth.

Only he couldn’t; he shouldn’t and he didn’t.

Shepard took a turn around a corner and Kaidan told him that way was sanctioned off. ‘Used to be my favorite view on the Citadel,’ Shepard said, and Kaidan sighed, chuckling, shaking his head even though Shepard wouldn’t be able to see it.

‘You say that about a lot of things,’ he replied. ‘Maybe we’ll find another one that isn’t part of a red zone.’

‘I’ve got a few in mind.’ Shepard swung the beam of light around and it fell over Kaidan’s boots, then lifted—not high enough to blind him, although he had to squint, raising his hand to shield his eyes. That was instinct, timed and trained reactions, how a soldier lived his life even outside of wartime. ‘You have any favorite places on the Citadel, Kaidan?’

‘None that’re still around.’ The date at the Cineplex they never got the chance to go on. The restaurants and cafés they never got the chance to have dinner in. The parks in the Presidium they never got to spend a temperature-controlled afternoon walking through together, Kaidan slipping his hand into Shepard’s and rubbing his thumb up and down the center of his palm, from the beat of his pulse to the lifelines under his fingers. The whole length of them, broken a couple of times, bisected by a few quiet scars, but more stubborn than anything Kaidan had ever seen. ‘There’s, uh… There’s Apollo’s Café, but that’s another red zone. Going up on that balcony isn’t a good idea. Can’t trust it to hold.’

‘No kidding,’ Shepard said. ‘Hey, you know—I used to like that place. Ate there a couple of times, even. It had a nice view.’

Shepard across the table, his face softening into a rare memory of a smile. Kaidan, the sweat at the side of his throat having nothing to do with the calm, cooling simulation breeze that stirred the heat at his temple. It helped, like a little push from behind, while he put all his cards in front of them, only to watch them get swept away when the waiter made room for their sandwiches. The benefits to happiness when two people shared it over a shared meal. 

‘Me too,’ Kaidan said. ‘They made one hell of a steak sandwich.’

‘Don’t remind me.’ Shepard started away from the ODC, the Old Docking Bay, and toward the New Commons. ‘I don’t know when we’re going to have another steak sandwich, Kaidan. I can’t have done too much for the galaxy if we never get to eat one of those again.’

‘Someone’ll think of something,’ Kaidan said. ‘A salarian, probably. We’ll get proteins that are way better food substitutes than the stuff we’re living on now.’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said. ‘But the real thing… There’s no substituting for that.’

‘Says the guy who actually _likes_ the Normandy coffee,’ Kaidan replied.

It was almost easy—except for the tightening of Kaidan’s ribs around his lungs. The half-familiar walk he took when he was heading back to the Commons Communal Housing Project was supposed to be something he started and ended on his own.

But Shepard was there and breathing next to him—not heavily, but noticeably. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, obvious reminders of _he’s alive, at least_ instead of something Kaidan could rely on.

That was what living meant. He shouldn’t have to ask if Shepard was really there all the time, only half of him showing up—or most of him, to be fair, without one of the parts that counted most, lost memories that didn’t mean anything when Kaidan started and ended them on his own.

‘I can slow down,’ Kaidan said.

‘Not on my account,’ Shepard replied. ‘Hey, it’s part of my exercise. It’ll be good for me.’

Kaidan regulated the timing of his steps anyway. Shepard would push himself past his limits whenever he was given the chance and it was up to other people to protect him from that, just like it was up to Kaidan to protect him from feeling the pressure he didn’t need, fraternization he hadn’t asked for.

‘Liara looks good,’ Shepard added. ‘Then again, when doesn’t she?’ He angled the flashlight beam over a shared courtyard, toward one of the complex blocs. ‘This where you’re staying, Kaidan?’

‘I’m in Theta-Seven, actually,’ Kaidan said. ‘Behind the big one up front. But if Hackett signed off on me as your escort, I’d better take you back before I head in for the night.’

‘And here I was hoping to get the grand tour, stay out a little past my curfew.’ Shepard’s flashlight was searching for something, but it never stopped long enough to land—maybe because there wasn’t anything to land on. When it swung around to Kaidan again, Shepard added, ‘Okay, anything but that look, Kaidan. I can take anything but that look.’

‘There’s nothing to see in there after-hours, anyway,’ Kaidan said. Just hallways, shared bunkers and private ones for the higher ranking officers, who sometimes switched out with soldiers who snored the loudest. A sacrifice for the greater good; everybody getting at least some sleep. No matter how bad it was, it was theirs to keep. Kaidan felt like chuckling again but the laughter never made it out of the wreckage. The light stayed on him until it dropped away—finding another, empty spot in front of both of them. ‘You remember what it was like in recruit dorms? It’s kind of like that, only without all the charm.’

‘Or the practice sessions,’ Shepard said, and Kaidan had to admit that yeah, he was right.

Nothing was practice anymore. Nothing spared them the time for practice. They were flying in blind wherever they were headed and they had to accept it, live with it and keep moving. It wasn’t about getting past it or over it, just not staying under it.

‘Not that we don’t see some action now and then.’ Kaidan licked his lips, dry, the hunger and the pain like a signal from another system. They were taking a long time to reach their destination. ‘There was a gang breaking into some of Commander Shepard’s favorite stores on the Citadel a while back, even.’

‘Hope you gave them hell, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

‘Nothing but the best in your name, Commander,’ Kaidan replied.

There wasn’t far left to go. Kaidan stepped around a pile of rubble and reached back for Shepard without thinking; when Shepard closed his hand around Kaidan’s shoulder and leaned on him, the pain came through, a sudden burst, a quick explosion that faded as quickly as a rocket flare without leaving a trace of ozone smell behind it.

‘Steady, soldier,’ Kaidan managed to say.

‘Steady, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied.

The flashlight pressed into Kaidan’s side, a flanking maneuver that wasn’t about impact but force exerted over time, the wear and tear of friction. Shepard’s hand was still on Kaidan’s shoulder, something Kaidan could feel reverberations of in his chest, his stomach, the arteries in his throat and thighs.

‘All clear?’ Kaidan asked. His voice was another rocket flare, giving away evasive maneuvers and stealth positions, which wouldn’t have brought home a victory anyway.

‘Yeah.’ Shepard let go with the same square head for protocol as always.

A relief, Kaidan told himself, even if it didn’t feel like one.

They passed the Rations Supply Building, locked up tight and guarded by red-eye duty, watching them pass behind their night-vision visors.

Kaidan kept waiting to wake up, to open his eyes and see Shepard leaning over him. _Finally_ , Kaidan would say. _You woke me. I was waiting for you to get it._ Then, he’d put his hand against the back of Shepard’s neck and pull him down for that first good morning kiss, pressing it to Shepard’s mouth instead of against Shepard’s shoulder. The idea of it, more than the reality, had always been so _damn_ good.

‘It’s pretty late,’ Shepard said, reaching for his key card, a magnetized strip running along the bottom for swiping authorized Alliance members only. ‘We could chaperone each other back and forth until daylight, but Hackett might wonder if we’ve been knocked on the head one too many times for active duty. Me, especially.’ Shepard switched off the flashlight, a pale gray shape under the perimeter sweep-lights. ‘You want to come in? Strategically speaking,’ he added, ‘it makes the most sense. Alliance protocol, logistics, chaperone rules—you name it. Plenty of reasons why you should stay.’

There were more reasons than Shepard knew—and more reasons than Kaidan could count for why he should go.

The lights on the door’s code-lock flashed from three red to three green.

They weren’t backed into a corner, forced into defensive positions, running from hostiles or looking to make a last stand somewhere strategic. Even if that was where Alliance had set up their base of operations, not anyone’s favorite spot on the Citadel but probably the most tactically advantageous, Shepard was only asking Kaidan in. No commands, no orders—a different brand of protocol.

‘I’ve gotta get back,’ Kaidan said.

‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to sign off on that, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied. ‘Rules are rules. The last I checked, you’d be doing the same thing in my position.’

Kaidan’s mouth twisted to one side. He still knew the exact moment he realized Shepard liked the way that looked, the way his face shifted into one Kaidan recognized only because of possibility instead of visibility. Kaidan had been waiting for that face, Shepard’s shy, soldier’s smile, the man beneath the carbon-carbide helmet he was used to wearing all the time.

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Kaidan said finally.

Almost like being ordered to evacuate the Normandy, the words tasting like fire and ash in his mouth—only this was being ordered _into_ something, or tugged into it, pulled along by the gravity Shepard always had over him.

Kaidan followed him inside, the door hissing shut into lockdown again. The hall lights powered up as they passed and powered down behind them; it was part of the same facility that had the ICU wards on the other side, but these were residential compounds for Alliance’s boldest and bravest. Somewhere in the sub-levels were the meeting rooms, the briefing and debriefing chambers, the private sessions between senators and storage units that held materials Kaidan wouldn’t ever be cleared to know about. Just knowing there was something down there was classified information he hadn’t shared with anyone on his team.

Reaper tech and weaponry, for the most part—that was Kaidan’s guess. The same stuff that’d done so well trying to destroy their entire race kept for the sake of improving their future.

And Shepard, in the middle of that. Swiping his card a second time, scanning his eyes to get in. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much trouble this salarian working security had getting that to happen,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got too many implants, apparently. The first three almost fried the circuitry. I felt like I was going to start shooting sparks out of my eyes.’

Kaidan waited on the other side of the doorway.

‘You coming?’ Shepard asked.

_No,_ Kaidan thought. _Usually, I’m being left behind._

He stepped inside. There was nothing special, nothing different about the room. It didn’t even have a fish tank. But there were model ships set up in an enclave on the wall, standing guard over Shepard’s bed. It wasn’t a hospital cot.

‘Pretty decent place, right?’ Shepard said. ‘If I was on house arrest, anyway.’

‘You’re getting pretty good,’ Kaidan replied. ‘At the model ships. That’s an impressive collection.’

‘You should come by more often.’ Shepard offered Kaidan a warm protein drink and Kaidan accepted it, popping the tab, ignoring the smell. ‘I’d even let you fly them, if you wanted.’

‘I’m no pilot, Commander,’ Kaidan said.

‘Me neither,’ Shepard replied. ‘Just…don’t tell Joker, all right?’

The last time Kaidan had seen Joker was on the Normandy—fixing the engine problem with Cortez, Vega doing the heavy lifting, Donnelly and Daniels assembling new parts out of the old ones. He hadn’t said a thing about EDI but Kaidan knew the look on Joker’s face as if it was something he’d turn away from if he saw it in the mirror. The way they’d felt could’ve been related, part of the same family of uncertainty and loss.

‘My lips are sealed,’ Kaidan promised. ‘Your secret’s safe with me. You…comfortable with standing?’

Shepard didn’t admit to anything, but they both sat on the same cue. A new chair to wait in, Kaidan thought. No more and no less comfortable than the last one. The protein drink stuck to the sides of his throat; it was just enough inside his stomach to remind him his stomach was almost empty.

And somewhere in there, between pieces of a conversation that hadn’t been assembled, that didn’t form a whole, that couldn’t be put up on the shelf to show off to anybody, Kaidan finished the protein drink, and yawned a few times, and, halfway through a sentence, gave in to what his body needed by giving it sleep.

*


	13. XIII

Kaidan remembered that he used to pass out all the time in brain camp, always tired and always hungry thanks to his biotic metabolism. They worked themselves to all edges of their limits, testing how far the L2 implants could take them, and when they were running on empty, they just shut down.

What Kaidan couldn’t remember was the last time he woke up feeling rested. He would’ve been able to enjoy it, too, if it hadn’t been for the headache, nausea underneath, and the headache sandwiching it. His body was stiff, maybe, but that didn’t count as much as what was going on inside of it, the sound of his breath dragging in through his lungs, filling them and filling them.

One day, he was gonna blow.

There was only so much air pressure a guy could take in without letting it out regularly. Kaidan also couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that, fingers tightening on his thighs, digging hard into muscle and skin beneath the fabric of his fatigues, sharp pain that barely made it through the wall of pressure grinding his brain between his temples. Flat, round drills—like somebody out there was mining for resources inside his head.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

The last thing Kaidan wanted—or thought he wanted—was body heat other than his own. He was already sweating, the back of his neck damp, a flush on his belly, racing the nausea in his veins. Wrists, throat, thighs, chest. It was all connected to his stomach. It was all connected and Shepard was right there next to it.

‘You have to tell me where it hurts,’ Shepard added, his voice a steady, low rumble, like an engine that just kept running.

Nobody noticed when it was. They were used to the sound, constant and even consistent. They noticed the silence when it powered down, though, like absence was the only thing in the galaxy that could really be measured. The space something left behind when it was gone. The force of wanting it back again.

 _Everywhere_ , Kaidan considered saying, but he bit down on it. He hadn’t died. He didn’t know what everywhere meant. Only Shepard knew about that—and what he’d learned was a pile of broken databytes on a graybox in Alliance custody. All the secrets of what it meant to defy the odds and even gravity, and they’d lost it.

‘Headache,’ Kaidan managed. The sound of his own voice was like sharp turian fingers shearing through metal. ‘…That obvious, huh?’

But it came at him from all sides; it flanked him, surrounded him. It kept him in its sights from every angle there was and there was no choice but to bunker down and wait it out.

Sometimes it felt like a soldier’s life was nothing more than waiting. Waiting to live—but mostly waiting to die.

Shepard’s knuckles brushed Kaidan’s ear on the way to his temple. The touch was light. Kaidan might’ve been sick even without the nausea contributing—John Shepard, Commander and Spectre, not thinking about all the times he’d rubbed the gray hair at Kaidan’s temples before, thinking it was the _first_ time he’d ever touched Kaidan that way.

‘How’s that,’ Shepard said, only half a question.

Kaidan grit his teeth until the grinding of his molars made his jaw pounded as hard as his head.

‘I’m thinking you need to lie down, too,’ Shepard added. ‘I’ve seen Chakwas in action enough to know a thing or two about when a soldier needs bed rest.’

‘I’m good,’ Kaidan said. They’d stopped lying to each other for a while—and in the fear that came with being honest, with saying every truth that came to heart instead of to mind, they’d found mutual freedom. Cracking jokes about elcor and old serial vids they watched when they were kids after Kaidan had spread Shepard’s legs and knelt between them, dicks together, one hand holding them both, using the muscle and the bone and the hard planes of Shepard’s stomach and hip to get them off. To come all over him, one after the other, and for Shepard, voice ragged and pupils blown, to chuckle like a groan and say _With great satisfaction: we ought to do that again soon, Kaidan._

Kaidan knew even then how much he loved him, how much it hurt to love him—how much it’d hurt to lose him and how much it’d hurt Shepard if Kaidan lost hope in front of him.

Kaidan squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the lids twitch.

‘Yeah, you’re good,’ Shepard said. ‘And I’m a turian, and Garrus doesn’t mind missing a shot. You want to lie down?’

 _With you_ , Kaidan thought.

‘I’m good,’ he said again.

Shepard held him by the shoulder—soldier to soldier, mostly, a _good job_ or an _all clear_ or a _we made it_ , even if it was less impact than the usual, solid clap. Shepard’s scarred thumb was on Kaidan’s collarbone, his fingers undoing the top buttons on his shirt, cool air mixing with Shepard’s warm breath on his throat.

It wasn’t fair to expect Shepard to look after all of them. What he gave them had to be balanced out somehow and that was in what he’d lost—and still, even understanding the sacrifice play as much as he did, Kaidan still felt like he’d been the one to make it.

It wasn’t fair of him, either. Or to him.

There was no ‘them.’

‘I should go,’ Kaidan said.

‘Hey—that’s my line, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied, his chuckle as hard as shrapnel lodged in a thruster fan. Kaidan should know; he’d been there, watching two engineers work on extraction, going slow to avoid damaging the blades. ‘Let me get you into bed.’

It’d be easier than he thought; Kaidan didn’t say that. When the sound of your own voice made your head feel worse, you knew it was time to stop talking. And when Shepard’s arm was around Kaidan’s waist, looping him up to his feet, chest to chest and hips to hips—when Kaidan was actually grateful for the headache, because it left no room for any other feelings—Kaidan wouldn’t have done anything but follow, even if it was a suggestion instead of acting orders.

‘Can’t remember the last comfortable bed I slept on,’ Kaidan admitted. ‘…Not that I’m complaining.’

‘I wouldn’t blame you if you were, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

He would, but he wouldn’t notice it—it’d just be there, a disappointment that didn’t merit a demerit, much less a demotion. Kaidan let his legs fold, giving himself to support that wasn’t Shepard for a change.

‘…Not that this one’s going to be any more comfortable,’ Shepard admitted. ‘You know, I’ve still got some of the high-grade painkillers they had me on around here somewhere.’

 _I’m good_ , Kaidan repeated, without saying anything. He shook his head instead, face pressed into Shepard’s pillow. He didn’t know why he was expecting it to smell like the one in the captain’s cabin on the Normandy—because it was all hospital issue soap and sanitizing detergent, no chance for sweat except what was beading at Kaidan’s temples, heating up his face.

‘Thanks,’ Kaidan said.

It meant a lot of things. Thanks for everything, mostly. Thanks for the time we had together. Thanks for saying I love you while you still did. Thanks for making all of it true even if it didn’t last. Thanks, because everybody else is looking up to you instead of at you.

And Kaidan…

Kaidan wasn’t looking at Shepard at all.

‘Any time, Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘Any time.’

It’d been this bad before, absolutely—and chances were that when you thought things were getting better, you’d only be reminded of how they were getting worse. In a way, suffering that, accepting it, living it, was a relief. The storm Kaidan had been waiting for had finally broken.

It hurt. It hurt like hell. Kaidan had fought like hell and he’d seen Shepard again and that was it, the terms of the promise he’d made. And Shepard hadn’t made any promises at all.

He drifted, in and out of it; it wasn’t the first time Kaidan wished he could power down like a decommissioned ground transport vehicle. Once those ran out of fuel, they stopped moving. People did the opposite, going over and over old terrain, not knowing how to leave their tracks behind.

‘Trust me,’ Kaidan had told Shepard one night, back to belly, ass to hips, ‘it’s going to be messy. I’m going to be… I’m going to be a pain in the ass when it hits, and I’m going to blame everybody for it, and it’s not gonna be pretty.’

‘I do trust you, Kaidan,’ Shepard had replied. ‘It’s that bad, huh?’

‘Hey—’ That was where the memory got vague, Kaidan on the verge of falling asleep. ‘Right now, we don’t even have to think about it.’

_Yeah. I guess we don’t._

Kaidan drifted. It must’ve been what it was like to be spaced, but he’d never asked, and Shepard never brought it up. Being alone like that—Kaidan wanted to say he understood it, sitting in the room after what happened with Vyrnnus, trying to picture the reasons why in his head. Trying to give them Rahna’s face and Rahna’s eyes and Rahna’s smile.

But he didn’t know what it was like. He hadn’t been there.

His head hurt like hell. He kept fighting it, too, because that was what Alliance brass did: they fought until they were done fighting and then, they weren’t there anymore, replaced by new soldiers in new uniforms.

He thought he could feel the bed shift, a changing weight, a different gravity. All he had to do was ride it out, bunker down, and wait. _Wait_. This was a rout, not a surrender. He could…

He could regroup.

And not even Shepard came into this place, pain that was the opposite of emptiness, pain that came before love instead of because of it.

When Kaidan finally opened his eyes, squinting against the possibility of a second wave—a beta strike, after the alpha—the lights were still too bright. That would’ve been enough to set the headache off for another round on a bad day but this time, it didn’t.

Something, a warm breeze or warm breath, tickled across the stubble on Kaidan’s jaw and throat. His pulse skidded and slowed, dry sweat sticky on his skin.

The bed wasn’t comfortable. Shepard was there anyway, shielding Kaidan with his body—but quiet, even peaceful.

He’d fallen asleep.

That hadn’t happened much during the Invasion. Kaidan could’ve tired him out six ways from midnight only to feel him shift and stir only a couple of hours later, if he was lucky to get even that much. Shepard didn’t fall asleep although, sometimes, when Kaidan held him, he slept for a while. Kaidan wouldn’t have called it restful, but at least he was resting.

The scars on Shepard’s face were soft. The shadows his lashes made over his cheeks were as close to perfect as anything got, especially these days. The lines in his forehead, deep-set wrinkles, didn’t smooth out entirely but they didn’t look like the rest of the scars anymore.

Shepard was asleep and they were sharing the same pillow. It was the calm after the storm, or just a guy finally getting the break he deserved.

None of those memories to haunt him. The loss he’d come to understand over time; the friends he’d get to make all over again.

And the people who loved him, barely breathing in his bed so they wouldn’t wake him up for anything.

Kaidan didn’t know how long it lasted. Hours, maybe. It could’ve been minutes. It might as well have been years. When you weren’t paying attention to how time was passing it didn’t matter that it was. When Shepard shifted, yawning, stretching, flinching because he was only half-conscious and couldn’t stop himself, Kaidan said, ‘Easy.’

‘Hey,’ Shepard said, all awake, all at once. ‘I should be saying that to you. How’s the…’

‘Head?’ Kaidan wasn’t going to be superstitious about it. Either it’d act up or it wouldn’t and talking about it wasn’t going to call it back or send out any signals or anything. ‘It’s a pain. But it’s…better, now.’

‘Better than good?’ Shepard asked.

‘Okay,’ Kaidan said. ‘Okay, I get it.’

‘It wasn’t an order, Kaidan,’ Shepard added. ‘It was just a question.’

Only with Shepard, nothing was ever ‘just’ anything. Kaidan would’ve asked Liara if this is what she felt like sometimes, the burden of knowing things somebody else didn’t or a truth that was too heavy to carry alone. But he didn’t, because it wasn’t. It was one man when it should’ve been two, a few years of history instead of lifetimes.

They were lying there together but it wasn’t ‘together again.’ Kaidan wanted to take Shepard’s hand and run his thumb over the scars, over the knuckles that weren’t swollen anymore, until Shepard shifted and sighed and maybe moaned, sensitive to the touch, remembering, wanting, and wanting to remember—or remembering to want.

Kaidan wanted. All the time, actually, as often as he remembered. Every second and every breath.

‘Something tells me you’ve been riding yourself too hard lately,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan almost managed a chuckle. It echoed against the spaces pain had made in his head and his chest, deep tunnels like an underground nest of rachni. ‘Can’t let you have all the credit for that, Commander. Some people are just trying to live up to your high standards.’

‘So I was that bad, huh?’ Shepard asked.

 _Yeah. And that good, too._ Kaidan licked his lips, dry and tasting of the old protein drink. A little chalky—and maybe the sudden influx of nutrients had fed the pain instead of the stomach, tipping the balance, making it stronger and more sustainable than the body that was always, always hosting it.

Now that sounded like something out of a cheap Blasto horror knockoff.

‘You were who you were,’ Kaidan said. ‘Who you’ve always been.’

‘Now I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a relief or not,’ Shepard replied.

‘It’s a good thing.’ Kaidan searched for some kind of pattern on the ceiling to help him focus but there was nothing there. No texture, no leaks—no rubble, even. Nothing to suggest that the station outside was still wrestling with the aftermath of being an official front during the Reaper Invasion. ‘There’s… There’s nobody out there like you, Shepard. And I’ve seen a lot of it. I should know.’

Shepard chuckled in reply. ‘And _now_ it just sounds like I was aiming for a compliment. Thanks all the same.’

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said. ‘Do you want a fish tank in here? There’s gotta be something Liara can do about getting hold of one, some fish to go in it… They’ll be safer with you than with anybody else, with the guard detail on this place.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Shepard’s chuckle slid into a sigh the same way Kaidan was sliding in toward the center of the bed.  It pulled itself out again the same way, too. ‘You know how many fish I lost when I was too busy to feed them?’

‘You got an aquarium VI for that,’ Kaidan said.

Shepard’s shoulder tensed, his scarred fingers twitching. Kaidan forgot to blink until his eyes started to burn—and then instinct kicked in, for good or bad, the part of a person that kept them breathing for as long as possible, long after they should’ve stopped.

Delaying the inevitable… Maybe.

Being stubborn, absolutely.

‘Huh.’ Shepard’s posture eased but Kaidan’s didn’t, too aware of every place they were touching, fabric on fabric and skin beneath. ‘I guess it’s not exactly classified information, is it?’

The whole thing could’ve gone too many ways. Kaidan’s head, slowed from too much sleep after being awake for too long, couldn’t get the tactics straight. He couldn’t even see the playing field.

‘Thanks for telling me,’ Shepard added. ‘Sounds like it was pretty useful for a guy like me.’

‘Soothing, too,’ Kaidan said. ‘The sound of the bubbles, the filtration system… You could barely hear the whir when it switched on to dump the food in, but you knew it was there. It hummed, I guess, but not like the rest of the Normandy hummed. It worked on its own. It kept those fish alive.’

‘Where are they now?’ Shepard asked.

Kaidan swallowed. The headache was cutting in and out—like the first time they got in contact with a squad of volunteer soldiers on earth, Vega cheering and pumping the air one-fisted, while in the distance a flurry of blue birds took off from the branches of the trees.

‘That’s helpful of you, Mr. Vega,’ Cortez had said, tired and sweating and grinning with blue eyes Kaidan couldn’t look at head-on. ‘Do it again a little louder and we won’t even need the radio. They’ll hear us all the way out on Omega.’

‘One of the soldiers on board,’ Kaidan said. ‘Lieutenant James Vega. He’s looking after the fish.’

Shepard was as still as a smoking gun. ‘The ones I don’t remember buying?’

‘The ones you didn’t remember to feed, either,’ Kaidan replied. ‘Memory’s… Memory’s a funny thing, Commander.’

‘Like how I remember you used to call me Shepard,’ Shepard said.

Even in bed, a force of habit, the sound of the name when it changed because Kaidan’s voice kept scattering. There’d been a lot of that. ‘Shepard’ pressed to the base of his spine, to the curve of his ass, to the backs of his knees while he was on his stomach with his cheek resting on folded arms. And when Kaidan saw his face ease up, the swell of Shepard’s bottom lip in three-quarters view, he’d rolled him over onto his back and knelt between his legs, rubbing his thighs on the insides, enough to make Commander John Shepard shiver.

 _Should I be worried about how good you are at this?_ Shepard had asked, and Kaidan had told him maybe worry wasn’t the best option, but he could try enjoying it.

And now, lying in bed with Shepard, worrying wasn’t the best option, either—but there was still no way to enjoy it.

‘I guess so. But when a guy saves the galaxy, I’d say he deserves some extra respect. You may not remember this, but you… You got me off the field in London. Put me and Garrus on the Normandy to make sure we got out.’ Kaidan didn’t think about the details, just the facts. The hand that’d rested on his cheek had been all but replaced with new synthetics and working prosthetics, fingers that looked exactly the same but weren’t. ‘And before that, in a hot situation on Mars—literally hot; there was a sandstorm and I was cornered, beaten pretty bad by a hostile—you saved my life then, too.’

They were gonna have to tell him sometime—about the lives that hadn’t been saved, about the hostiles that _had_ beaten them. Mordin and Thane and Legion. And Anderson, and all the things Kaidan didn’t know if Shepard already knew—the way it’d gone down, if it had, no more moving than Hackett handing him a file and taking off his cap and saying it was going to be a hell of a lot, a hell of a lot to take in.

There’d be a form for questions. Another doctor to talk through things with, to help with Shepard’s head—and not the dents in his skull this time.

The heart was different. There was no suture for grief with no goodbyes, for loss with no name.

‘I’d do it again, Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘No question.’

‘I know,’ Kaidan replied. ‘Although I’m kind of hoping you won’t have to, if it’s all the same to you.’

Shepard’s fingers twitched, probably nothing more than an involuntary muscle spasm. His knuckles grazed Kaidan’s hip, where his shirt had come untucked from his fatigues, and for a short-frame vidspan, barely more than two seconds, Shepard’s fingers were on Kaidan’s bare skin.

‘I’ve gotta get back,’ Kaidan said. He sat up, so fast it didn’t even give him time to get dizzy. Being stiff and sore was just the same as breathing; a body kept at it even after there stopped being a good reason. ‘Squad’s probably thinking… I don’t know what they’re thinking, but I can’t do this to my team—go missing on them.’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard replied. ‘I get it, Kaidan.’

He sat up, jaw clenched so he didn’t make a sound—at least, not beyond the creak of stiff muscles. But he was looking good, really good, right out of bed, hair buzzed short again and most of the beard gone, the scars more obvious, the pillow with a dip and a shadow in the middle from where his head had rested all night, and another next to it. Kaidan had left that one. Already, the pillow was starting to fill those out; in about fifteen minutes there wouldn’t be a sign they’d been there, even less time taken for the warmth to fade off the sheets.

‘Thanks for the drink,’ Kaidan said.

He preferred whiskey, Canadian Lager if it was available. Shepard knew that. He’d known it somewhere, sometime.

‘Any time, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

Outside the door, past a few corners, knowing the way out of the ward but just wanting to get somewhere a bare observation window wouldn’t get an angle on him…

Kaidan stopped, finally, his shoulders pressed against a code-locked supply closet, his palms rubbing the smooth surface of the door below the touchpad. He didn’t dig his fingers or his nails in or tear chunks out of the material the way he could have during a biotics spike. He was strong enough. He’d be able to do it. He’d rip through the door, through the wall if he had to, and inside he’d find nothing he was looking for—no way out, either.

‘Shepard,’ he said, for all the times it should’ve been that instead of _Commander_.

Then, he pushed off the wall, knees holding him up long past when he should still be on his feet.

*


	14. XIV

Some people might’ve thought that wasting the resources, the funding, even the manpower, on building monuments when there were still housing projects that needed finishing, was a symptom of why humanity had almost been wiped out in the first place. But the truth was, people needed those symbols; they needed all kinds of reminders that there was more to living than scraping by. The heart couldn’t keep beating without the veins—or something like that, anyway.

The Citadel needed to be a center for hope. It needed to be anything but private. It needed to be a beacon, a star to guide passing ships.

‘It’ll do the public some good to see Shepard out there cutting a red ribbon or a white one or whatever the hell’s popular these days,’ Hackett said. ‘Black for mourning, I don’t care. Whatever ribbon we can find. And the live broadcast’ll go out to everyone with a signal for some sense of unity.’

‘He’s always been good at bringing the galaxy together,’ Kaidan agreed.

‘Only problem is,’ Hackett said, ‘the names that’ll be going up. That’s the trick.’

Kaidan waited while Hackett unlocked his hands from behind his back. The smell of burning synthetic materials in his office was better lately, and eventually, standing there long enough, you got used to it. It faded into the background like everything else—part of the routine, what they called normal because it’d started to be familiar.

_Exactly how much have you told Commander Shepard?_ Kaidan thought, but chain of command kept him from asking. This might’ve been post-war but protocol hadn’t flown out the window; it was one thing the Reapers couldn’t change.

‘Casualties,’ Hackett said finally. ‘It was my place to tell him about the casualties. About the losses. I even gave him a few names. But the specifics…’

‘It’s not the same as living through them.’ Kaidan waited for the headache—but it’d been three days now, and it hadn’t come back. ‘What are we cleared to tell him?’

‘Don’t make me put a stamp on it, Alenko,’ Hackett said. ‘Somebody needs to tell him everything.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Kaidan replied, and his elbow was numb when he saluted.

He took a long walk back to the New Commons. The krogan operating the level elevator nodded at him, grunting, and Kaidan sat down in the community garden instead of heading inside.

There’d been plenty of times he’d thought he couldn’t do a thing.

None of them were like this.

He would’ve wallowed in it until sundown curfew, the sirens for protein distribution going off, a warning that in thirty minutes everybody without clearance needed to get off the streets. But he had a new message flashing and he pulled it up thanks to muscle memory, like reflexes being tested when he was in for a routine physical.

Alliance said jump, soldiers said how high.

Alliance said tell the guy you fell in love with all the things he couldn’t remember about the year that almost broke him, and Kaidan didn’t even ask when.

Kaidan was expecting Liara. Steve, even, one of those check-up calls that meant more to Kaidan than he could put into words—and even more than he could put to good use.

It was Shepard.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘This is Commander Shepard. …Is this a bad time?’

Define bad, Kaidan thought.

Define time.

Define _this_.

‘I’m not sure if I know what a good time looks like anymore, Commander,’ Kaidan replied.

They both chuckled. Maybe Shepard meant it, but Kaidan didn’t. ‘Good point. I think the definition used to involve overpriced drinks and bad music and a couple of professional asari dancers somewhere close by.’

‘Then I’m definitely not having a good time,’ Kaidan said. Shepard chuckled again. ‘But I’m off the clock right now,’ Kaidan continued. ‘So it’s as good a time as any.’

‘Except for the times with professional asari dancers.’ Shepard’s chuckle turned into clearing his throat. ‘I know curfew’s going to be in effect soon, but we’ve got clearance. Might be a nice night for a walk.’

‘I can’t say much about the view.’ Alenko’s heart shuddered and stopped, then found its rhythm again and kept beating. ‘It won’t be the Citadel you remember, Commander.’

‘I’ve seen parts of it already. It’s about time I see the whole thing,’ Shepard replied.

He was right. He deserved it. And it was something chain of command had passed on to Kaidan to make happen—to use his discretion, his knowledge of Shepard’s style, and his integrity.

He didn’t have a resource redistribution center to head to and ask for more of that, grafts for where motivation had worn too thin. ‘I’ll see you at Alliance HQ, then,’ Kaidan said. ‘Bring your filtration mask. You’re gonna need it.’

Kaidan had higher level clearance when he arrived; maybe it was because he was always asking ‘how high?’ instead of ‘no way’ and that was how Alliance took care of its own. Maybe he just had to pull it off like a bandage sticking to a wound after it’d healed—taking some of the old, dead skin with it.

Actually, the faster you pulled the bandage tape off, the less you felt. It was working up that momentum that was the hard part every time.

Wanting to slow things down, make them last… That hurt more than the alternative.

‘How’s the head?’ Shepard asked, mostly unrecognizable under his mask. Kaidan figured he looked about the same.

‘It’s holding together.’ Kaidan adjusted the clearance badge on his chest, Shepard’s already pinned in place and reflecting the lights by the gates. ‘Where to?’

The gates slid open with a beep and a hiss, ushering them into darkness and away from Alliance HQ. ‘It’s your turn to pick, Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘It was my choice last time. So what’s good around here?’

The pace they started at was slow and steady, which only worked as a strategy as long as nothing was chasing you. All too often, something was; Kaidan wasn’t used to moving at that speed and it made his legs feel wearier, in a way, than outright running did.

‘Well…’ Kaidan’s breath was recycled with a vibration from the mask around his mouth. ‘There’s always the zone that used to be Huerta Memorial. Now it’s a pile of east wing rubble and a makeshift field hospital—in the wings that didn’t collapse, anyway. If you’re looking for gardens, we don’t have too many of those left. New Commons has a couple of community centers for sustainable farming, nothing more than small-scale at the moment, just trying to see if we _can_ grow things—but they’re definitely not the parks we used to have on the Old Presidium. No shady asari foliage, that’s for sure.’

‘Old Presidium.’ Shepard pursed his lips and succeeded, halfway, to a whistle that was more air than sharp sound. ‘Never thought I’d see the day.’

‘A lot of people felt the same,’ Kaidan said. ‘About themselves—and about you, too.’

‘What about you?’ Shepard turned to look at him, blue eyes bright as always, but even they couldn’t tear through the darkness of the Citadel at night—when there were only a few streetlamps to show them where the streets were, where the zones were on or off limits. Kaidan didn’t have a flashlight and Shepard hadn’t flipped his on yet, so they made their way from checkpoint to checkpoint, from light to light, never staying too long in one place.

‘You never lost hope,’ Kaidan said. ‘At least… You didn’t for a long time. Longer than anybody else. And I guess I figured, if you could do that for everyone… The least I could do was the same for you. I didn’t lose hope, Commander.’

‘Sounds stubborn,’ Shepard told him.

‘Yeah.’ Kaidan stepped out of a pale beam of light into the shadows flanking it. ‘We all were. We had to be.’

‘That’s all they should drill us on in basic training,’ Shepard agreed. ‘How to be a hardass, a quad-breaker.’

‘Right now they’re teaching civilian patrol duties and search and rescue protocol,’ Kaidan said.

There was one path through the Old Commons that wasn’t off-limits and Kaidan took it, Shepard at his side. Just two old friends enjoying a walk together to nowhere particularly special—it was exactly how their first date had gone. Of course, there’d been a steak sandwich at the end of that late afternoon and there wasn’t anything but a dead end waiting at the end of this one, where part of the balcony level had buckled onto the walkway below.

Shepard cleared his throat. ‘I saw some of the broadcasts from London.’

‘Heard they’re doing all right down there,’ Kaidan said. ‘Coats is leading the reconstruction effort. They’ve had a few dextro-amino equality and supply riots, but who hasn’t?’

‘Garrus is over there too, causing some hell.’ Shepard paused. ‘Seems like him and Tali…’

‘A lot of things happened.’ Kaidan folded his hands behind his back, the same way he stood to attention when Hackett was briefing or debriefing him. ‘People, finding each other… No promises. No guarantees. Just something that seemed right when everything else seemed wrong.’

_Now would be the time, Alenko_ , he thought, but there was never a good time.

Telling Shepard would mean never knowing the difference between organic and inorganic—not in the synthetic sense but the one that put two people together, that made one reach for the other’s hand and close the distance between them until, chest to chest and belly to belly, loneliness took on a new meaning.

‘Hackett told you about our losses?’ Kaidan asked instead.

Shepard’s pause was standard issue, nothing more. ‘Yeah,’ Shepard said. ‘There was a list. I read it. Seems like things kept going south at the end.’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied. ‘But it wasn’t the end. It just felt like it sometimes, that’s all.’ Into the long pause that followed, like one shaky halogen street lamp to mark the way, Kaidan added, ‘You…have any questions about it?’

‘Can’t ever think of what to ask,’ Shepard said. ‘I’m used to answering. _What’s the status, Commander?_ And then I say we’re keeping it together—and we do, thanks to the efforts of my team.’

‘We kept it together. We did the best we could with what we had.’ And more than anyone should be expected to do; and more than anybody else would’ve done. ‘Everybody knew what they’d signed up for. You’re the hero they say you are, Shepard, so don’t question that.’

Shepard nodded, short and crisp and regulation standard, a private to a superior officer after the latter’d said _At ease_.

‘That’s what they tell me,’ Shepard said.

‘I can’t speak for them,’ Kaidan replied, ‘but I know what I saw. A man who shouldn’t have been able to do even half of what he did—practically holding the whole galaxy together by himself.’

‘No wonder I feel so tired.’ Shepard’s voice sounded like it used to in another kind of darkness, only his shoulders visible, his face not in his hands but they might as well have been—because he wasn’t seeing anything. It wasn’t about being tired—it was about being spent. Kaidan would’ve done whatever it took back then to lift that heaviness off his shoulders.

But somebody else had. An ancient catalyst that was their great space station. An explosion that’d always been about to go off, even when they hadn’t known they were sleeping on a fuel canister.

‘You did more than anybody could’ve asked, Shepard,’ Kaidan said. ‘The friends we lost knew it was a sacrifice you were prepared to make for them at any time. A galactic fleet stood with you at the end; you were doing plenty right.’

Thane Krios. David Anderson. Mordin Solus. Legion. Just because they had names didn’t mean Shepard would feel any more or any less guilty than he would about everybody else out there who hadn’t made it through and hadn’t made it onto their own plaque.

‘Thanks, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

‘Any time,’ Kaidan told him, and meant it.

They turned back the way they’d come, avoiding half-cleared rubble along the way.

‘During the last leg of the Invasion,’ Kaidan continued, words coming more easily when the rest of him was in motion, almost like he was leaving everything he was saying behind, ‘we had some new members of the crew, too. Did they tell you we were flying with a prothean on board?’

‘Yeah?’ Shepard whistled again, still thin and quiet. ‘And here I thought I’d hallucinated Hackett telling me that part. You never can tell, with Alliance grade pain meds. …What was the guy like?’

‘No sense of humor. Not exactly charming about it, either. I mean, he called us primitives and I don’t think there’s a way to say that’s supposed to be a compliment.’ The smell of burnt metal alloys still came through the filtered air in Kaidan’s mouth, filling his throat to his lungs. ‘Had four eyes. Always watching you do something—I think he was just figuring he could do it better.’

‘Protheans,’ Shepard said.

‘Tell me about it,’ Kaidan replied.

They chuckled together, broken chunks of rubble scattered across what was left of the sidewalk. It got nicer and nicer the closer it got to Alliance HQ.

‘There were a couple of others,’ Kaidan added. ‘No more protheans, though. I don’t think even the Normandy had room for another on her ship. Lieutenant James Vega—he made pretty decent breakfast, I’ll give him that. Looked up to you, too.’

‘The one with the fish,’ Shepard said.

They hadn’t known if that was all of Shepard they’d be able to inherit. Vega’d asked Kaidan if he wanted to look after them, just for a while, just so they’d be there when Shepard got back, but Kaidan had told him it was okay. _Shepard never remembers to feed them, anyway. If the aquarium VI’s busted, you can look after them._

‘Not that he’d appreciate being remembered as the fish guy,’ Kaidan said. ‘But…yeah. That’s him. You had a lot of respect for him, you know. Maybe that’s why you two were always doing the krogan thing and knocking heads. Trying to prove something, I guess. Primitive,’ he added.

He’d missed Shepard’s chuckle.

He’d missed Shepard’s hands, even the rhythm of his breath, his blue eyes open and staring at the skylight when Kaidan shifted and stirred out of sleep. He missed Shepard’s chest and the heartbeat beneath, the hair below his navel, the scar on the inside of his thigh. Kaidan missed kissing it and rolling after Shepard when there were no more kisses left for the night, Shepard’s collection of freckles like a galaxy map but hidden in the shadow holding him, the cover provided by Kaidan’s body.

‘Steve Cortez—he was the shuttle pilot,’ Kaidan continued. ‘He’s a good guy. Lost his—’ A snare in Kaidan’s throat blindsided him but he was all about evasive maneuvers, so he dodged it. ‘—lost his husband during the Invasion. Samantha Traynor was an invaluable asset, too.’

‘I’ve seen their files,’ Shepard said. ‘That get well vid the crew sent… They were on it. You know, I think the doctors in charge were trying to use something like that to trigger my memory.’

‘It’s a new chance. It’s a new beginning.’ Kaidan managed to make that sound like he wasn’t marketing it. But it was how it’d go out—and people needed that so they wouldn’t be stuck on the in-between for an asari lifetime. ‘You did good, Commander. And now, it’s time to move on to even better.’

‘They should be interviewing you for those clip packages, not me,’ Shepard said. ‘You’re good at it. Almost too good.’

‘Hidden depths,’ Kaidan replied. ‘Something a guy like me has to have, considering I’ve never been the life of a party. Overshadowed by the krogan and the turian on the team, usually, since they’re so hard to miss.’

‘I can’t exactly picture you doing the Krogan thing.’ Shepard was looking Kaidan up and down; Kaidan could feel it, no less of a shadow than he was. ‘No offense. …Although technically, I think that’s a compliment.’

‘Thanks, Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

The name settled like debris—eventually, all things stopped shifting around and treading sky, displacing the air; eventually, friction wore them all down, fuel burning out, and floating through space wasn’t possible forever. The name was like an impact, like a collision—but also like what came after, a shower of sparks and smells and heat and, of course, regret. For a tragedy that had to happen. For a galaxy that was always going to move on.

Shepard kept breathing. The friction imposed on that wasn’t enough to slow him down. A lot of close calls. As many hits as there were misses. Shepard had kept breathing when they were alone together, too, chest rising and falling, skin with a few red half-moons from Kaidan’s fingers and how tightly he’d been holding on. Kaidan knew a few of the scars that had replaced those marks—which he’d kissed his way towards saying sorry about, so even then he had to know they weren’t permanent.

_That’s okay, Kaidan. Everybody holds on too tight to something now and then._

Shepard’s knuckles brushed Kaidan’s, the backs of their hands against each other. Time didn’t stop and no new lights went on, showing them another course to take. ‘Kaidan,’ Shepard began. His fingers were on Kaidan’s pulse, between his wrist and the heel of his palm, and Kaidan was already starting to turn toward him, into something they’d been, into something they weren’t anymore.

‘Alliance HQ,’ Kaidan said. ‘Here we are. I’ve gotta go, Commander.’

‘Do you?’ Shepard asked. He sounded young again, the first few times they’d flirted, when it was so directionless Kaidan had to ask himself, _Is this guy really this obtuse?_

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘I do.’

Shepard didn’t hold on longer than it took Kaidan to break free, to pull his hand away, to adjust the filtration mask on his jaw and wish he could breathe something other than recycled air for a change.

‘Get back safely, Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘That’s an order.’

‘Aye, aye, Commander,’ Kaidan replied.

Somehow, he made it back without remembering how long it took or how he got there. He slept. He didn’t think of it as home.

*


	15. XV

The security detail for the unveiling ceremony was tight. ‘You’re not working this one, Alenko,’ Hackett had said. ‘You’re being honored, too, so you can wear your blues, but that’s the long and short of it.’

 _Aye, aye, sir_ was getting to be as regular as breathing out after breathing in. Kaidan kept repeating it but he wouldn’t have been able to explain why.

‘You’re getting the team front row seats—right, Major?’ Riviera asked.

Kaidan smoothed the gray hair back from his temple. His reflection was what it was, the stiff dress blues starched at the shoulders and tight around the waist, whatever he’d polished more noticeable—hopefully—than the expression on his face, which he’d have to polish on his way to the memorial grounds.

‘It’s gonna be a long ceremony,’ Kaidan said. ‘…Probably not that exciting, unless one of the krogans starts up with another guest of honor. There’s always a chance of that, since something about Shepard… It gets them all riled up. But yeah, I got the team seats. All you have to do is show them your ID at the checkpoint and you’ll get in. Where you sit—that’s up to you, though.’

‘And you’re looking pretty good, Major,’ Riviera added. ‘Bet I’ll see your face all over the extranet tomorrow morning and we won’t get anything done on extraction ‘cause you’ll be too busy signing autographs, fighting off the fans.’

‘Thanks, Riviera.’ Kaidan paused. ‘I think.’

Riviera winked. ‘Any time.’

Kaidan left the complex early, palms itching from the day of work he was missing. He could’ve been down in the trenches, using his biotics to lift the support beams, usually so the casualty tally could rise by the end of the day. It was better to know, though. That was what he kept telling himself—that it was better to know than the alternative, to keep waiting for somebody you’d lost to rise out of the battered landscape and remember to kiss you.

Kaidan waited, standing next to the bench out front. Someone had used some kind of pocket laser to carve into the metal back: MISS YOU. Kaidan’s fingers tightened their grip and he had to relax them one by one.

When the old helicab picked him up, it wasn’t empty—empty like he expected everything would be; empty like his hands.

‘Our escort picked me up at the Docking Bay,’ Liara said from within. ‘When I found out what their next stop was… I had to embrace destiny, I think.’

Kaidan slid in next to her, the door rolling shut at his side. ‘It’s good to see you, too, Liara.’

‘It’s just as good to be seen.’ Liara didn’t search his face for any meaning deeper than a hello between old friends. Kaidan let out a tight breath, easing the tension from his shoulders but not his lungs. ‘How’s the arm?’

‘Yeah, it’s better,’ Kaidan replied. ‘How are the, uh…’

‘Don’t worry about getting the official duties right,’ Liara said. ‘Even I can’t remember all the titles anymore. Research, let’s say.’

‘Always research.’ Kaidan figured, technically, he was doing the same thing. Digging through layer after layer of a future that’d suddenly become history—maybe not as ancient as the protheans, but when something was behind you, if it was a day or a year or a century, did it really matter? ‘It’s great to see you.’

‘And it’s great to be seen,’ Liara agreed. She was dressed well, ready to make a showing of it. ‘I hope they give us all copies of the group photograph. I’d like to keep it—for the obvious reasons. Nostalgia, posterity, bragging rights…’

Better than a memorial wall with a list of names and no smiles, not even the forced ones. They could hold up their medals and hope the brightness was reflected in their expressions.

‘How do you think Vega’s going to handle the formal introduction?’ Kaidan asked. ‘You know, they… Alliance had orders for me to brief Shepard about that stuff. Too bad I didn’t have an asari mind-meld at the ready, right? All the extra implants in my brain and I still can’t transfer memories. Doesn’t something about that seem…’

‘Unfair to me?’ Liara waited for Kaidan’s silence to become agreement. ‘Of course it does.’

‘Good to know,’ Kaidan said. ‘I was just checking. Trying to make sure my perspective didn’t get knocked loose when the Normandy crashed.’

The ride didn’t speed up or slow down. There was only pedestrian traffic, everybody heading to the same spot. Their helicab cleared two checkpoints and headed into the restricted area; whenever Kaidan blinked he pictured Shepard sitting in the middle seat, chuckling about how the three of them were getting a little too cozy, and you’d think—what with saving the galaxy and all—Alliance might spring for another helicab for their guests of honor. Kaidan could have reached over, put his hand on Shepard’s thigh, and ran his thumb along the outside seam of his fatigues, hand steady on top of camouflage, feeling the warmth of Shepard’s skin underneath.

Instead, he tightened his fingers in his lap and waited for the engine to be cut.

‘A deep breath,’ Liara said. ‘It’s nothing we haven’t done before.’

‘So why does it feel like we’re gonna be run through the gauntlet?’ Kaidan asked.

Liara almost laughed. Kaidan squared his shoulders and let a lifetime of experience take his hand and help him out of the cab.

Two privates were waiting for them. ‘Dr. Liara T’Soni,’ they said. ‘Spectre Kaidan Alenko. It’s an honor.’

‘The honor is all ours,’ Liara replied. She met Kaidan’s eyes and hers sparkled; Kaidan thought about what she meant, that everyone was young once, and met people who changed their lives forever. Little moments here and there, decisions, introductions, details…

What made a soldier. What made a man.

What made sense and what didn’t, two war heroes ushered into a repurposed debriefing room that might’ve been an automated information hotline center, judging by all the switchboards. Garrus Vakarian was leaning against the wall, all scars in the shadows; James Vega cracked his neck from side to side while he rolled his shoulders, about to burst out of his blues at any second; Steve Cortez was checking out one of the dashes, _not bad, not too bad_. And Tali had her mask on; Kaidan thought about how the quarians were onto something there, just a blank sheen of opaque material in place of eyes that showed too much, or a mouth that twisted whenever somebody said a single name.

Joker was there, too—sitting. Just sitting. He had his cap on.

Kaidan remembered the first time Shepard had died; how they’d both been at the ceremony and Joker took off his hat, holding it in brittle hands.

Joker didn’t look like a man who’d lost everything. He looked like one who never had anything to begin with.

‘Now, if I didn’t know any better,’ Garrus said, ‘I’d suspect we were all secretly called here to assemble a special-ops team for a harrowing mission that may or may not get us all killed—except for the turian in the room, who’s far too good to let that happen.’ When no one said anything, air whistled through Garrus’s mandibles. ‘Just like old times. And you say turians are the ones without a sense of humor. A war hero can still hope, can’t he?’

Just look at Shepard, Kaidan thought. Only he got this feeling that everybody was looking at him instead.

Hell, Kaidan would’ve been staring at himself too, if he could stand to do it. He would’ve been right there with them, thinking about how a gathering like this might’ve been for Shepard’s wedding—maybe, if he’d said yes when Kaidan asked—and they’d be on their best behavior so they wouldn’t ruin the ceremony.

It wasn’t that. Kaidan smoothed his hair back again while Liara and Traynor caught up, while Vega kept rolling his shoulders like they were too heavy even for him, while Garrus’s visor lights shifted and changed—maybe he was catching up on all the video entertainment he’d fallen behind in while the Reapers were destroying their home worlds.

‘You look good, Major,’ Cortez told him, shaking his hand. ‘How’s the Citadel been treating you?’

‘I’m not gonna complain,’ Kaidan replied.

‘You sure about that?’ Cortez’s smile came with deeper lines around his mouth than ever, but it was real, genuine, in a way Kaidan felt like he hadn’t seen since he was a kid on summer vacation in Whistler, playing games on a datapad under the tented blanket at night long after Dad told him to go to sleep. ‘Anybody who doesn’t complain these days might be a little too positive. Heard about the Docking Bay riots—you there for that?’

‘Got in with the first wave.’ Kaidan kept breathing—because it wasn’t _How’re you holding up, Major?_ ‘We managed to contain the problem before it got all the way to the warehouses. Tripled the security detail on the area but there’s always the chance somebody might get desperate and try again. All it takes is a spark for a leaky engine to go up in flames.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Cortez said. ‘Trying to get some of the fuel efficient all-terrain and short-flight vehicles up and running hasn’t been easy. Almost blew my eyebrows off one time and, you know, I’m used to working cleaner. A _lot_ cleaner.’

‘Damn, the two of you are acting nerdy,’ Vega said. ‘Night of our fucking lives and you’re talking about tech stuff?’

‘We’ve gotta talk about _something_ to keep our minds off the show you’re giving, Mr. Vega,’ Cortez replied.

They could’ve been in the Shuttle Bay, teasing each other the way they always did, Shepard coming up behind Kaidan with arms folded over his chest, shaking his head. ‘Amateurs,’ he’d say, and then, ‘meet me in my cabin later.’

Grunt arrived. That was noisy. There was no headache. They waited an hour, maybe less, before a ceremony coordinator showed up and gave them their cues on temporary datapads. Then they filed into the auditorium, what used to be a rec center, the pool emptied out, the whole place sterile because of the chlorine. Lights, reporters, a crowd, a live feed, and a row of chairs—Shepard already there, shaking Hackett’s hand for a photo-op.

Somebody’d done a good job of covering up most of Shepard’s scars. He looked brand new—which in a way was the truth—and handsome in the ways Kaidan never found him handsome. But he was photogenic, somebody to look up to, to pin hope on next to his medals of honor.

‘Commander,’ Kaidan said, waiting for the handshake, the photograph, Shepard’s camera-and-council-ready smile.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard replied. ‘You look good. Always knew you’d clean up nice.’

‘You’re one to talk.’ Kaidan held steady while Shepard held his hand, palm to palm, not knowing Kaidan had knelt between his legs once, the fronts of his thighs against the backs of Shepard’s, Shepard’s knees against his ribs—that Kaidan had run those same palms up the soft flesh and scar calluses on the underside of Shepard’s arms, all the way to his hands, spreading fingers against fingers and kissing Shepard’s ear until he was panting. ‘You’re looking good too, Commander.’

The picture was done. Shepard had to make the rounds with the other members of the team. The place was too crowded and Shepard hadn’t let go of Kaidan’s hand.

‘You up for the afterparty?’ Shepard asked. ‘I know—I have to make an appearance or Hackett’s going to vaporize. But I was thinking after… I guess I just like the late-night walks.’

‘Everybody’s gonna be looking for you,’ Kaidan pointed out.

‘And they already found me.’ Shepard still had his commander smile on, the one Kaidan couldn’t stare at directly. ‘Most of me, anyway. You in, Kaidan?’

‘I didn’t know you were this much of a rebel,’ Kaidan said. ‘You’re the poster boy for the Alliance and you’re planning a break-out… Are you sure it wouldn’t be more fun with Garrus?’

‘Garrus is covering us at the fundraiser,’ Shepard replied. ‘He’s the inside man.’

‘You’re that stir-crazy, huh?’ Kaidan asked.

He tried to remember where the scars were, but the reconstructive foundation they’d put on Shepard’s cheeks and jaw made it impossible. It really looked like the real thing, skin that’d healed over and practically overnight.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard said, ‘I’ve played so many rounds of Skyllian Five by now that I never want to see another deck of cards again. I’m even starting to get sick of Blasto.’

‘Okay,’ Kaidan replied. Because he didn’t know how to say no to him; because all he did was say no to himself. ‘But only for Blasto’s sake.’

Shepard’s smile eased up on the teeth and the jaw. ‘You look good, Kaidan.’

‘You, too,’ Kaidan replied. Then, he took his seat, before his knees stopped working on a dais in front of the entire galaxy. The first two human Spectres. The turian with the weirdest sense of humor Kaidan had ever come across. A quarian, an asari, three krogan—one of whom was apparently very pregnant—and a collection of humans that might just as well have been different races.

Empty seats up front staying empty for those who weren’t there to join them. Moments of silence. Speeches. Cheers. Shepard bobbing up and down all night and the crowd never able to get enough from him.

‘I don’t have any speeches prepared,’ Shepard told them, standing behind the podium. ‘And it turns out the only kind I’m good at are the ones right before heading into a fight I might not be coming out of again. Good thing I don’t have to make one of those tonight, right?’ He paused for the laughter, for more cheering. ‘So I’ll have to leave the speeches to the people who know how to give the great ones. All I can say—all I’m qualified to say—is that supporting the Alliance means one more step toward the future. Our future. We built that together. And we knew at the beginning it wasn’t going to be easy, but the things that are worth it never are.’

‘So how many times did you practice that one in front of a mirror?’ Kaidan asked as Shepard took the seat beside him again, easing down into it over the applause.

They loved him. Of course they loved him. Not in the same way, not with the same urgency and despair that Kaidan loved him—but he was theirs, a hero, and even if it wasn’t his place to feel proud anymore, Kaidan felt proud anyway.

‘Only about a hundred,’ Shepard said. ‘I think I might be getting better at these things.’

He rubbed his thigh to his knee. Kaidan could have done that for him—if they’d gone back together to the same room, the same bed, a quiet space where the whole galaxy didn’t share the same man. Commander and first human Spectre John Shepard, clean cut and dressed to the nines, medals of honor on his chest gleaming next to the standard insignia they all wore.

Kaidan swallowed the rising grief. He stared at the faces in the crowd until they all blurred and stood when his name was called to get his medals pinned on. When he was closer to the podium he noticed the model ship—a replica Normandy, of all things, put together so well you’d never know it’d originally been in pieces.

‘Thought it might mean something,’ Shepard said when Kaidan sat. ‘Thought it might be nice to have her with us, too.’

Then, they all stood, the whole crew. The cheering might’ve brought on another headache but it didn’t—which meant the pain had left and so had hope.

It was the outcome they couldn’t have dreamed of. They couldn’t have asked for anything better, even if some of them wanted so much more.

Security detail escorted them to another level for the reception after the ceremony, Alliance brass and private entrepreneurs who were funding research and supplies, all of them wanting to meet Shepard. It was part of the unspoken deal they’d made when they pitched in—getting the bragging rights, not to mention an investment in the Alliance that’d put them on the scene in the future. When the new Council reconvened, they’d have their say.

Kaidan stepped out into the hall where it was dark, not exactly cool but not as stifling.

Hackett was right. The air conditioning units were something to miss, especially when sweat flushed the throat and inched down his spine and his thirty seconds in the shower couldn’t wash the feeling off.

 _Hey Mom_ , Kaidan imagined typing, something to keep his head from imploding. _Had the big ceremony today. Wish you could’ve been there; it was really something. I like to think Dad would’ve been proud to see it, too._

_There were some good speeches mixed in with the usual stuff. Some ran a little long, though. I bet most of them will be published somewhere eventually, excerpts free to browse, a donation to get the full versions. I’ll tell you all about it later. You don’t have to buy them._

_Is it as hot there as it is on the Citadel?_

_I thought a night like this, a reception like this, might be for my wedding._

_It’d be good to see you. Soon, maybe. Soon._

Kaidan didn’t pace. There was nowhere to sit. He wasn’t down on the floor, either, just standing at attention, ready whenever he was needed. Ready, now, for anything.

‘Whoa, this isn’t the bathroom,’ Vega said behind him. ‘I’m starting to wonder if Scars even knows what _ride the porcelain bus_ means.’

Kaidan turned, slowly. Vega had a drink in his hand; Kaidan wished he’d thought of that before he’d headed out into the hall. ‘Hey, Lieutenant.’

‘It’s gonna be _Hey, Major_ soon from the way they’re talking in there.’ Vega rolled his shoulders, looking like Kaidan had been the one to walk up behind him, not the other way around. ‘This is where the party’s _really_ at, huh?’

‘Only the strongest can handle it out here,’ Kaidan replied. ‘It’s what separates the raw recruits from the real soldiers.’

‘Yeah, I always _knew_ you were a wild one.’ Vega snorted, like he’d been trying to chuckle, like he’d forgotten how. ‘Gotta be something hiding under that surface. It’s always the quiet ones.’

 _Vanilla’s always dangerous_ , he’d said once, over a game of cards, Kaidan losing each round and thinking about meeting up with Shepard after. Kneeling over him, kissing the freckle at the side of his throat, just a few breaths away from the pulse, while the stubble and scars on his jaw scraped Kaidan’s cheek. Friction everywhere, hot and getting hotter.

 _You don’t even know the half of it, Lieutenant_ , Kaidan had told him. Losing another round of poker… That hadn’t mattered even for a second.

‘So…’ Vega took another pull of that drink. ‘Couldn’t take all the double-speak in there either, is that it? Go figure. Would’ve thought you’d be down for that.’

‘It’s always the quiet ones,’ Kaidan said.

Vega snorted again—definitely a laugh, or the hollowed shell of one, some kind of crash-landing wreckage James was trying to salvage. ‘Yeah, well. It’s like a fucking thessian zoo in there. Next thing you know they’re gonna be teaching us all tricks—hell, we’ve already got the scheduled mealtimes. Shepard’s been shaking so many hands it’s like they don’t know how close he came to losing that arm.’

_It was like losing a limb._

‘Shepard’s been at it for a long time,’ Kaidan said. ‘He’s… You know he doesn’t do anything halfway.’

‘Guess that’s why we’re all so damn loyal,’ Vega replied. ‘’Cause he’s so goddamn great.’

‘Where’d you get that drink, Lieutenant?’ Kaidan asked.

Vega grinned, hard and tight, making all his scars look like dents in the side paneling of an Athabasca Class Freighter. ‘Now you’re talking my language, Vanilla. You want me to grab you one? Hell, we can even blow this joint. No use sticking around just to shake the guy’s hand, right?’

‘It’s pretty rough, huh?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Never fucking been rougher,’ Vega replied. ‘I was serious about blowing the place. Get out while the getting’s good, before the whole station’s polished up the way it was before. Like nothing ever happened here.’

‘He was really proud of you, Lieutenant Vega,’ Kaidan began. ‘You know that he was really—’

‘Don’t say it. Don’t you fucking— Don’t. _Sir_.’ Vega brought his hand up to salute and Kaidan nodded, once, a formal exchange, the only language they really shared. ‘I’m gonna go get you that drink.’

‘Just following orders?’ Kaidan asked.

‘I’m figuring you need it,’ Vega said.

He was right about that—but he left Kaidan alone in the hall with nobody but his selfishness for company.

They couldn’t pick what to lose and how to lose it; sometimes they had to cut a limb off so the rest of the body could survive. Training called that tactics. Life seemed to teach you it was just plain instincts. And, if you were lucky, you could build the limb again out of synthetic materials. Prosthesis was so advanced now that even Kaidan could hardly tell where the real flesh stopped and the replacement began.

*


	16. XVI

They found a breakroom Kaidan’s ID card had clearance to access and Kaidan couldn’t stop feeling guilty about leaving Shepard to his biggest fans. But Shepard knew the score; he always had. He’d charm every last one of them just by looking the way they thought he would—if a little bit smaller.

‘This shit tastes like krogan piss,’ Vega said, hissing after he’d chugged half the bottle.

‘I take it you’re talking from experience?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Hey, what happens on Omega _stays_ on Omega.’ Vega lifted his bottle. ‘So, what’re we drinking to?’

‘To Commander Shepard,’ Kaidan suggested.

‘Yeah.’ Vega was quiet for a long second, eyes unfocusing before they cleared up again. ‘Yeah, sure. That’s a good one.’

‘Best there is,’ Kaidan agreed, and they both drank. Two old soldiers, fortifying themselves against the battles they hadn’t been trained to fight. ‘Our, uh… Favorite commander on the Citadel.’

‘Literally,’ Vega said.

They drank to that, too.

‘So…’ Kaidan waited for that discomfort—the same awkwardness he’d lived through during his first night at brain camp, when nobody knew anybody and everybody was out to prove something—to pass. ‘What _did_ happen on Omega?’

‘I don’t know if you can handle it, Vanilla,’ Vega said. ‘Looks like it might make the rest of your hair go white to match.’

‘Try me,’ Kaidan replied.

Vega whistled, a small noise that filled up the whole breakroom. ‘Fine, you wanna play it like that? We’ll play it like that. But don’t _say_ I didn’t warn you.’

‘You talk a big game, Vega,’ Kaidan said. ‘Now you’ve gotta back it up.’

Vega tried, anyway. But his story about waking up one morning in Afterlife with his dogtags tied around his _Major, if you know what I mean_ didn’t trump the time Kaidan had gone dancing on his first shore leave and wound up with an invitation to work there full time, starting with a private performance for a primarch.

‘You didn’t do it, though,’ Vega said.

‘Only the primarch could answer that for you, Vega,’ Kaidan replied.

‘ _Damn_.’ Vega shook his head, rolling his reaction into his shoulders instead of rolling the tension out. ‘I’ve gotta stop calling you Vanilla, huh? How the hell’d a guy like Loco ever keep up with _you_?’

‘He did all right.’ Kaidan’s bottle was more than half empty now. ‘But I guess we’ll never know.’

Kaidan was almost relieved when the silence fell because it was something he knew—something he lived. The familiarity wasn’t comforting, not exactly, but it was a bad thing he recognized instead of one that might’ve been good, if only for a while.

‘…And that’s why I don’t get invited to too many parties,’ Kaidan said.

‘Nah. I brought the damn thing up. Loco’d be pissed at me for making you look like that, too.’ Vega shook his head again, scars harder than ever. ‘Hell, he’d kick my ass—or try to, anyway.’

‘We can rebuild,’ Kaidan said.

‘That’s what they keep selling us,’ Vega replied. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it. We’re tougher than that. We kicked the goddamn Reapers off our planets. The casualties can’t be denied, but we’re still here and they couldn’t beat us. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Like it happened to some other galaxy.’

‘Until you step outside,’ Kaidan said.

‘Guess we’d better get back, huh?’ Vega stood and it was easy to tell the difference between a young soldier and an old one when Kaidan followed.

‘For what it’s worth, Lieutenant,’ Kaidan told him, ‘you’re gonna make one hell of a major.’

For the first time, Vega chuckled—all the way down the hall, until they ran into Shepard on their way back to the reception.

‘So,’ Shepard said, ‘this is where the real party’s happening. I should’ve known.’

‘That’s what I said,’ Vega replied, back straightening, shoulders stiffening, his whole body drawn to attention the way Kaidan’s used to be—but for different reasons, undressing in the starlight after he’d finally turned Shepard’s terrible music off. Then it was nothing but the sound of his pulse, the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on skin, while Shepard watched him from the bed, the sound of both of them breathing separately, but also together. ‘Commander Shepard.’

‘I’m not going to write you up, James.’ Shepard didn’t sound tired. He wouldn’t sound tired, not until he felt like he was alone. ‘At ease, if that’s what you’re waiting for.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Vega saluted. ‘Permission to return to the reception, Commander.’

Kaidan was going to have to bring that up with him later—if he ever got the chance. If Vega ever came back to the Citadel, even though he hated it there.

Kaidan got why; he did. It wasn’t for everybody and especially not these days.

‘Permission not necessary,’ Shepard said. ‘But for what it’s worth… Permission granted.’

Vega left them alone in the hallway, halfway between the celebration and the breakroom.

‘I’m never really been the life of the party,’ Kaidan said. ‘You’re the guest of honor.’

‘The way I remember it, we all got medals.’ Shepard glanced at the ones on Kaidan’s chest. ‘Some of us got more than one, too.’

‘It was a long ceremony,’ Kaidan replied. ‘I guess I must’ve tuned out when they were handing out Major Kaidan Alenko’s. I was just waiting for Commander Shepard to get his. Took them long enough, though. …What were you watching for? Garrus Vakarian’s, right?’

‘You didn’t tell me you were the second human Spectre, Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘Had to find out at the ceremony. Congratulations.’

‘Wouldn’t have happened without you, Commander. You paved the way.’ Kaidan wished he’d had less to drink—or that he’d had more. Being in between was never pretty. ‘The speech was good. I liked the part with the model ship.’

‘Wouldn’t have happened without you, Kaidan.’ Shepard almost looked proud of himself—smug or goofy, the man more than the model soldier, something that’d been put together over long and careful weeks. Painstaking assembly that ended in something that looked just about the way it should and now, it was moving on its own, doing its own thing. Showing up for speeches and everything. ‘If—was his name Delgado?—if Delgado wants to be father of the year, I could always send it his way.’

‘It’s the Normandy,’ Kaidan said. ‘You should keep it.’

‘You heading out now?’ Shepard asked.

‘It was a good speech, Shepard.’ Kaidan tried to maneuver around him, but everything he did brought him too close to Shepard in the hall, deep underground where the integrity of the complex’s structure had managed to hold. And infrastructure had held, too, but Kaidan couldn’t get past Shepard without brushing against him. ‘But I think I’m… Permission to head out now, Commander?’

‘I’m not up on my ranking protocol these days,’ Shepard said, ‘but the last I checked, a major didn’t have to ask a commander for permission. It should be the other way around.’

There had to be another way around, Kaidan thought. Or just straight through it, flying like Joker did, with the guts and the stupidity needed to take on that kind of mission—that kind of responsibility. Kaidan took a step forward, Shepard just smelling clean, like he had after every Council meeting he’d attended in person, like he hadn’t after everywhere else they’d been. Dirt and dust, sand and blood, and the sweat they poured into it. The lives they fought with. What Kaidan always thought was the most important—the lives they actually saved.

‘Permission to head out with you, Major?’ Shepard said. ‘Buddy system seems to be serving the Citadel pretty well. In fact, they’re having me record a PSA about it before the end of the week. _Always head out after dark with your buddy. This is Commander Shepard, and I approve this message_.’

Kaidan’s chuckle crashed into Shepard’s shoulder; if he’d turned his face or lifted his head, he could’ve slanted his mouth against Shepard’s throat, to kiss and measure the pulse. He’d wanted to for a long time, the reminder of a heart still beating, even if it was made more out of pacemaker these days than actual muscle.

‘Last I checked…’ Kaidan began. His voice snagged somewhere in the back of his mouth and he swallowed, hard, to set it free. ‘Last I checked, Commander, the number one hero in the galaxy didn’t need to ask permission from anyone to do anything.’

‘They might be calling me that,’ Shepard replied, ‘but it wouldn’t have happened without you, Kaidan.’

‘Yeah—but I wasn’t there for all of it.’ Kaidan’s mouth twisted. Shepard couldn’t see his face to tell, but he fought it anyway. ‘A lot of things… The way they went down, Commander—it felt like we weren’t on the same side for a long time. You know… Hackett told you about being dead for two years, right?’

Shepard sounded like a Citadel VI of himself—programmed not to offend anybody by having any sort of tone. ‘Might be classified information, Kaidan.’

‘It’s not classified information if it’s your life, Shepard,’ Kaidan said. There it was again, the name he’d murmured against Shepard’s belly, the hair below his navel, on the insides of Shepard’s thighs and the backs of his knees and the small of his back—and against the freckle on the side of his throat, and against his temple, and against the palm of his hand. The name Kaidan thought when he fell asleep, warm and easy in his arms; the name he thought when he woke up, the bed next to him empty all over again. Shepard just didn’t know how to stay in one place for too long, or long enough. ‘…Sort of your life, if death’s a part of that.’

‘So you’re telling me there’s only one year I don’t remember.’ Shepard paused; Kaidan was guilty about it, but glad he couldn’t see Shepard’s face. ‘Actually, Kaidan, to be honest with you… It’s weird, sure, but it might just be a relief.’

Kaidan did laugh, dry and hot—not crash-landing on a jungle planet hot, but scorched London wasteland hot. All burnt up. All burnt out.

‘Only a year to catch up on,’ he agreed. ‘It was a long year, but three would’ve been even longer. Still, a lot can happen in that amount of time.’

‘Thanks for giving it to me straight, Kaidan.’ Shepard even sounded grateful—instead of mad, which he should’ve been, or lost, which was how Kaidan felt. ‘Not too many people would be able to do the same, and I appreciate it.’

‘Knowing’s half the battle,’ Kaidan said. ‘And I guess the battle’s the other half of the battle.’

Neither of them said anything after that—at least not for a while. Shoulder to shoulder, facing opposite directions, maybe about to walk away from each other, too…

The position was familiar, an old habit for an old routine. Kaidan had put Shepard behind him, or tried to put Shepard behind him, so many times now—he had to know it wasn’t a fight he could win.

But Shepard wasn’t the only one who knew how to be stubborn, who didn’t have a definition for ‘impossible’ in their rule book.

‘Buddy system,’ Kaidan said finally. ‘We can’t expect anybody else to follow if we don’t lead by example.’

For some reason, it felt like surrender. Negotiations were over and this was gonna be it—walking back in the dark, using their new omni-tool flashlight apps, orange beams cutting through the darkness while it always, always closed up behind them again.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard began.

‘Come on, Commander,’ Kaidan said. ‘Let’s go. …Unless you want to spend the next hour talking to Wrex about how many krogan babies he’s been making lately.’

‘Right behind you, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied.

*


	17. XVII

During daylight hours and anytime you went sub-level, it was too hot. The abrupt shift to nighttime temperatures reminded Kaidan of stepping off the Normandy and onto Noveria the first time. He mentioned it, and Shepard laughed.

‘Now that’s something I remember,’ he said. ‘When are you going to learn to bring a sweater?’ 

They adjusted to the cold even if they couldn’t walk fast enough, not with Shepard’s pace, to get their blood pumping. ‘At least,’ Shepard added, ‘it’s not a stuffy reception room. I always take two of everything they bring by on platters before they get to the krogans and the good stuff disappears, but I’m pretty sure some of the senators were giving me looks.’

Icy sweat beaded at the back of Kaidan’s neck, then dried. He switched his omni-tool on as they stepped off the loading elevator and checked out at the gate, the rest of the Citadel quiet, maybe even wishing they were a part of the real festivities. They didn’t know it felt down there, like all the walls were closing in on them, officials and diplomats and Alliance brass and war heroes—that after an explosion like the one the Citadel had been through, some equal but opposite reaction was needed to set things right again.

‘It sure looks different,’ Shepard said.

‘A little gray at the temples, maybe,’ Kaidan replied. ‘But it’s still the same place.’

‘Guess I should’ve said something else when I woke up ‘cause you’re never going to let me live that down, are you?’ Shepard kept up a quicker pace than before and Kaidan reminded himself it was good—it was good to see him healing, walking on his own, picking up and moving on. ‘Didn’t realize how gray my beard was, either. Nobody thinks to shave a guy once they put him into stasis around here.’

They passed Alliance sanctioned areas and the red zones, no entry, fenced off from civilian areas, the field hospital, the Rations Supply Building, the Old Presidium where the Cineplex was still in pieces. _Blasto: Rise of the Raptors_ had been playing and all that was left in the rubble, which they stared at from above, was the word RISE: standing to attention but upside-down, like a recruit on their first day trying too damn hard to impress a TO.

‘Thought maybe we could go by the First Memorial,’ Shepard said into the silence, the beam of light from his omni-tool as steady as his voice.

‘You did everything you could, Shepard,’ Kaidan told him.

That was familiar ground. They’d had the same conversation, always a different version of it, so many times that Kaidan still went over it in his sleep. Not that he ever got Shepard to believe him. Not that it ever worked, but maybe the routine was something Shepard needed just as much as the next guy—as big as his victories, as small as his losses.

‘Okay,’ Kaidan said. ‘Sure. Let’s head over there. You know one of these days you’re going to get me into trouble being out after curfew all the time? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were looking to start something.’

‘Don’t let the press hear you say that, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied. ‘They might get the wrong idea about me.’

The light from their omni-tools led the way, muscle memory and impetus and gravity doing the rest of the work. Kaidan didn’t have anything left to say and Shepard seemed content not to say anything—different motives drawing them to the same conclusion.

Silence, but it wasn’t absolute. Sirens somewhere deep, deep in another zoning area, fading out almost as soon as they began. It was too late for any announcements, although now and then static crackled over the PA system, routine tests to make sure it was still up and running in case of emergency.

Finally, Shepard swung the orange beam up over the base of the First Memorial right in front of them. Only a few paces more and they’d be too close. The light still landed on a single name, Admiral David Anderson.

‘They tell me I was with him at the end,’ Shepard said, even harder and more unreadable than solid metal. At least you could stamp a name in that, say it out loud, know what it was saying. ‘Anderson. His last words. If he was ready.’

‘We all knew the score.’ Old words, maybe hollow ones. Or maybe they still meant something after all. ‘Hell, Shepard, we were old soldiers.’

But Shepard’s shoulders had that weight to them, the weight Kaidan recognized, leaning one arm with a bent elbow against a railing, his whole body one big bruise, black and blue around his eyes and quiet, handsome, lonely in the shadows.

Kaidan wanted him. Still, when Shepard was just trying to put his life back together like a model ship. It wasn’t about helping him fit the pieces where they belonged, choosing what shapes to put them in—it was about holding Shepard’s hands steady while he figured out where everything went, waiting for the glue to set. It wasn’t the instant stuff like they had for the newer models, either. It took a while, patience you could only have when you weren’t exactly breathing.

‘You would’ve died to protect humanity, too,’ Kaidan said. With his breath on the cold air, at least it didn’t feel like he was using a voice he’d saved only for the bedroom.

‘I would’ve died again, you mean,’ Shepard replied. ‘Maybe it was my time. Maybe it’d been my time.’

‘The way a thing goes down matters.’ The words were like rubber rounds hitting training armor; they glanced off Kaidan’s defenses and they’d leave a few bruises, but he didn’t feel the burn of live rounds, the pain he wanted. ‘You might not know how much you did, Shepard, and how hard it was, but I was there with you in London, _before_ London. We fought for you for a reason. It was a decision we all made.’

‘I’m going to miss him,’ Shepard said finally.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied. ‘There are some people I’m gonna miss, myself.’

The shape of Shepard’s back, Kaidan realized, was what he knew best. Not just when he was asleep on his stomach, one of Kaidan’s arms resting across it, but when he was sitting on the edge of the bed, or heading off on a mission, or passing through the shuttle bay on his way back from one. After he’d spoken to Hackett with his head bowed; when he was speaking to Alliance and allied forces all around the galaxy with his head held high.

And now, standing in front of a memorial wall. Trying to know how to lose something he didn’t remember.

They weren’t going to be able to give him that graybox back; Liara wasn’t going to meld thoughts with him to find memories that hadn’t been saved. And considering the way Shepard’s back looked now, halfway between returning from a failed mission and sitting on the edge of the bed in the middle of the night, already up for the day, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

Kaidan hadn’t made the call at the time. In retrospect, the way it went down… That was his sacrifice. Not losing Shepard—but never having him in the first place.

‘I was there,’ Kaidan said. ‘You were incredible, Shepard, but most of all… You were a man. The humanity we needed to save humanity. You weren’t Blasto and it didn’t end nice and tidy looking for an easy sequel tying in to a franchise, but you… You did good, Shepard. You did things nobody ever should’ve asked you to do. You’re gonna make new memories, and chances are… They’re gonna be better ones.’

‘Guess it’d be pretty selfish of me not to see that as an opportunity.’ Shepard lowered his omni-tool, light pooling at his feet, Kaidan keeping his angled to the side out of respect.

‘Just between you and me,’ Kaidan said, ‘I think you’ve earned the right to be a little selfish, for a little while. Maybe take a trip to earth that isn’t about giving war refugees speeches. Just…see the place.’

‘This Citadel’s not big enough for the both of us, huh?’ Shepard turned; Kaidan only knew because of the arc of light swinging around in a slow half-circle. ‘You trying to get rid of me, Kaidan?’

‘You took back earth,’ Kaidan said. ‘And you haven’t seen it in a while. There’s a lot going on here, but there’s a lot going on there, too. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’ Shepard never leaned on anything—that was something that wouldn’t change no matter how many memories he made, no matter how many were destroyed after. The low railing around the memorial itself—simple Plexiglas put up to keep the local refugee kids from climbing on it and a basic alarm system to keep smugglers from chipping off the engravings and hawking them for scrap—was right there but Shepard didn’t use it. He was Commander Shepard, and there was no help he really needed anymore on the Citadel. ‘Best to start at the beginning and work my way up.’

‘If Delgado’s little girl is any indication,’ Kaidan added, ‘chances are you’ll be pretty popular down there.’

‘I don’t know.’ Shepard’s light had stopped at Kaidan’s toes but Kaidan’s was still on an angle, about one o’clock, skirting the side of Shepard’s well-polished boot. ‘I think I might prefer a crash-landing on a jungle planet.’

‘You’ve had plenty of experience putting ships together lately,’ Kaidan said.

‘And I could use the vacation with none of the fuss,’ Shepard replied.

Kaidan chuckled, almost brighter than the double omni-tool flashlight beams that weren’t pooling their resources, their strength, doubling up to be something stronger than they were on their own. ‘You’d hate a vacation, Shepard. You’d be saving the native fauna and looking for anything that might just be in need of rescue—not to mention turning the local flora into… I don’t know, a more sustainable agricultural system for refugees from around the galaxy to come together and regroup their losses in a new, xeno-friendly colony.’

‘Hey,’ Shepard said, ‘compared to the stuff they say I was doing during the Invasion, that sounds like a vacation to me. …Might not be such a bad idea to make that colony, either.’

‘I’m thinking of heading back to earth for a while, myself.’ Kaidan stared at the light until his eyes unfocused. When he looked back up at Shepard, the shadowy space where Shepard had to be, little pinpricks of light like an ocular migraine—or a blind spot—filtered over the view. Not that there was much to see but darkness on darkness, anyway, and the orange omni-tool glow. ‘To Vancouver. My mom’s down there and it’s one of the main recovery centers. Always looking for more volunteers. Citadel’s gonna need people who can build something new out of the old soon enough and I’m starting to think I could be a lot more helpful somewhere else.’

‘Alliance is lucky to have soldiers like you,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan felt a spot of heat in the natural chill of the low-level air processing, conservation of energy regulations still in effect. Like a beam of light in the darkness, maybe, but the damp cold was still prickling the back of Kaidan’s neck.

‘You set a high standard for all of us, Commander,’ Kaidan replied. ‘You led by example, and now it’s up to the rest of us to do whatever we can to get through this.’

‘So… Vancouver, huh?’ Shepard asked.

A beach nearby; the old house right on the water. Before the L2 Implants, before Jump Zero, before Vyrnnus, even before the headaches—before Shepard, like the way the antebellum council was thinking about starting over A. I. instead of C. E.

After the Invasion.

_After Shepard._

And _Before Shepard_ , too: nothing but a messed-up kid who couldn’t get enough protein in him to fuel the biotic metabolism he had, who’d never asked to be the weapon that he was, who’d been trying to find out what it meant to protect who you were instead of take more than you needed just because you could…

But mostly, Kaidan remembered that waterfront. He remembered the view from his balcony window, the sliding door, standing out there at night in the darkness and letting himself feel too big for the skin holding him and too small for the world—much less for the galaxy. He liked to look up at the stars but he’d told Mom he wasn’t interested in a telescope, not really.

He wanted them to be far away, so he could see them all at once—at least when the sky was clear, although in Vancouver, that was a rarity.

‘Just thinking about the view,’ Kaidan said.

How he’d always thought, if they pulled through together, he might take Shepard there someday. They’d both wear sweaters and drink steamed milk with some of Dad’s Bailey’s mixed in, standing on the balcony, watching the stars together. All those plans and possibilities, the whole future they could’ve had—and the one Shepard had vanguarded down to the end. There was no blaming him. There was no keeping him.

‘What kind of a view was it?’ Shepard asked.

‘You know, I’m probably remembering it as being something more than it was.’ Kaidan chuckled again, the light from his omni-tool bobbing. ‘People do that. Build a thing up in their head from the good old days and forget what it actually looked like, what it actually meant. It wasn’t even a view like you got once you headed off world. Even the station on Arcturus had more to look at from the observation decks. It was just a small part of the Bay, and… I’d stand out there on the nights Mom was having a party, listening to the guests laughing in the garden.’

‘It sounds like a great view,’ Shepard said.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied. ‘It wasn’t too bad. And—you know, I had this collection of model ships… My dad kept sending them back from all the places he was stationed. Not that I could ride them out to see him there, but I guess it was just his way of letting me know I didn’t have to follow him.’

‘Now that’s a collection.’ Shepard chuckled, too, but it was delayed, like an echo from a deep crater, somebody shouting for help so far below the surface of the planet that by the time the sound reached their beta team, it was already too late. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting the chance to see it sometime.’

‘Mom’s already given it away,’ Kaidan said. ‘To some of the local refugee orphanages—something for the kids to play with, think about space.’

‘While the people in space are thinking about earth?’ Shepard asked. ‘…Maybe I’d better leave that kind of talk up to Liara. She’d figure it out—make it sound like something, too.’

‘Sorry about the ships,’ Kaidan said. ‘I just figured they should be anywhere other than sitting on a shelf in a bedroom nobody’s slept in for years.’

‘You’re a real hero, Kaidan.’ Shepard’s voice was earnest—and not the fake earnest he put on when the cameras were rolling, Diana Allers’s omni-tool on the mic and record function. It didn’t know it was being earnest, just like it didn’t know when it was being sexy. It didn’t know it had to be anything, like the hard armor they were all used to wearing into the hot situations, sweat between their shoulders and their shoulder plates, knowing where the weak spots were more than they knew where the strongest ones were still—after all this time—holding together. It just _was_ , which was what made it earnest. In a sea of speeches, it was the guy next to you saying _Damn_ under his breath as you surveyed the damage, the places you used to know, the dates you used to mark down on a calendar app, reduced to rubble with support beams shifting underneath. ‘Thinking of those things—for the kids. I’ll see if I can’t sneak it in to a broadcast, even if they’ve got me on pretty strict cue-cards.’

‘For the good of the Alliance,’ Kaidan said. ‘For the good of the galaxy.’

‘And for some reason they keep shooting down my ideas about mentioning Blasto.’ Shepard laughed again, sounding more natural, less buried. ‘I mean, who doesn’t like Blasto?’

‘I was never that big of a fan,’ Kaidan said.

Actually, they’d talked about that—once, after-sex pillow-talk that had to be about anything, _anything_ but what was going on outside Shepard’s cabin. So they’d talked about the books Kaidan used to read when he had the time, the games he had subscriptions to on the extranet, and the movies they liked. Shepard’s thing for Blasto that’d made Kaidan say something about tentacles, for some reason, sleepy and heavy and warm. Shepard had been just-fucked, eyes closed, not even studying the stars above the skylight. _I’ve never been that big of a Blasto fan,_ Kaidan had admitted. _But I’d go with you to see all the latest movies, Shepard, and I’ll keep my hands to myself during the parts with the explosions so you won’t be distracted. How does that sound?_

Kaidan Alenko—briefs down around his thighs, one knee resting on both of Shepard’s, a hand on his belly where the muscle was hard and the freckles were paler and the hair beneath the navel was surprisingly soft—had made himself a deal. Then, he’d brought Shepard into sleep with him, Shepard’s chest under Kaidan’s cheek.

That’d been a deal, too.

‘Hey,’ Shepard said. Kaidan almost said it back, _hey_ , the exchange that meant so much more when they were passing each other in the Shuttle Bay after a night they’d spent together, before a night they’d planned on doing the same. ‘You think there are still cineplexes running on earth?’

‘Could be.’ Kaidan lifted his omni-tool on instinct, light cutting across Shepard’s chest, reflecting off his medals of honor. ‘I can check, even; extranet might have the information.’

‘I was just thinking we might go to see one sometime,’ Shepard added. ‘Whatever they’ve got playing—it doesn’t have to be Blasto.’

‘I wouldn’t mind Blasto,’ Kaidan said. ‘I think Blasto’s _all_ they’re playing lately. Hackett told me about this footage Coats has of London during V-Day that they were thinking of releasing in high-def for everybody who wasn’t there, but especially for those who were. You know they’ll be making a blockbuster out of it soon. Then you might be watching yourself on the big screen, instead of Blasto.’

‘I’d rather watch Blasto.’ Shepard’s omni-tool flashlight slid up to Kaidan’s knees. No warmth came from it and Kaidan followed the length of the beam to Shepard’s fingers, knuckles still scarred, but healing. He had a solid grip for shaking hands, a steady arm for saluting. All basic motor-function, with a little help from the old Cerberus technology Alliance had managed to gather. ‘I don’t have the tentacles to pull off a starring role. …Is that a no to the movie and you’re just trying to let me down easy? You can give it to me straight, Kaidan. I can take it.’

Kaidan’s omni-tool beam finally wavered. If he could’ve, he would’ve brought it up to Shepard’s face, but shedding that much light on a situation…

It usually left a guy blind.

And that was _before_ he’d needed serious ocular augmentation in order to repair the damage done from the microburst at the center of a major explosion. One that’d rocked the entire galaxy, and Shepard was there at the heart of it.

There in Kaidan’s heart, too.

‘It was a yes to the movie,’ Kaidan said. ‘…I think.’

‘I haven’t been to one with somebody in a long time,’ Shepard added. ‘So you might need to show me the ropes. Now, they might not have popcorn, so it’ll have to be protein rations; we should probably remember to unwrap them before the movie starts so the noise doesn’t bother anybody. But other than that, it might not be too bad.’

‘Are you…flirting with me, Commander?’ Kaidan asked.

_No, wait—_

_Don’t tell me._

_Let me live in the illusion._

‘Well, it’s not fighting Reapers,’ Shepard said. ‘Chances are it might be harder.’

‘Huh,’ Kaidan said.

Shepard cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been asking you to look at my model ships for a long time, Kaidan,’ he added. ‘…Not that I’m saying I was asking for anything more than that, but dying… I guess it puts things into perspective. Not waiting for something instead of waiting too long for it.’

‘Huh,’ Kaidan said again.

Shepard shifted, omni-tool lifting to Kaidan’s hips. ‘All I know is that the model ship thing didn’t work and Garrus might’ve told me that was because, last he checked, this wasn’t the playground and you didn’t have pigtails to pull. I think Lieutenant Vega’s been giving him some strange ideas about what constitutes human interaction over there in London.’

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said. ‘At least he’s learned not to call it fringe.’

‘Can’t pull that hair you’ve got, anyway,’ Shepard agreed. ‘Wouldn’t want to mess it up. I don’t even know how you get it to stay like that—hell, Kaidan, I never have.’

But he’d messed it up before—his fingers raking through it all night long without either of them realizing what it meant. That first morning they woke up next to each other, when Kaidan’s hair was everywhere instead of smoothed back in the same style he’d had for years, something even heavy fire couldn’t knock out of place. He wasn’t just the soldier Shepard knew—the old soldier, now. He’d tried to comb his fingers through it but Shepard stopped him, hand to hand, and Kaidan had groaned but let it happen, warm from the pit of his chest to the insides of his thighs.

_Let me live in the illusion._

There were second chances and there was trying to relive something that wouldn’t ever be the same. The Shepard in Kaidan’s arms, who remembered all his scars, was the original make and model. And the pieces of what they’d been…

Kaidan didn’t know how to put that back together. He only knew that it wasn’t fair of him to try.

‘I’ve gotta get back,’ Kaidan said. ‘You should call in for an escort—get you to Alliance HQ safely too, Commander.’

‘Aye, aye, Major,’ Shepard replied, a good enough soldier that he didn’t miss a beat.

His voice echoed like a shot through armor—not glancing off a shield but caught underneath it, trapped in the damage zone by the same defenses that were meant to protect in the first place. Only the ricochet didn’t last. There wasn’t any pain.

That was a no to the movie, then, Kaidan thought, but he didn’t have to say it.

Some things, between some people, could go unspoken.

*


	18. XVIII

Kaidan’s clearance papers for relocation to Vancouver’s center of operations came through quicker than a request for a new assignment ever used to take in the old days. B.I.—Before the Invasion. ‘Nobody’s got time to waste because there’s nothing to waste it on,’ Hackett said, standing to attention with Kaidan in the same office he’d admitted shouldn’t have been used for a goddamn armory closet, much less an Alliance Admiral’s private base. ‘Still,’ he added, ‘I’m starting to get used to the place. That’s how you know you’re in too deep.’

‘Then I’m in too deep, Admiral,’ Kaidan replied.

‘That’s your home,’ Hackett said. ‘You go down there and whip it into shape. And give me the truth, no propaganda—how bad things are on earth. How good they are. And everything in between.’

There wasn’t any in between, Kaidan suspected; he’d only known what it was like to be in pain and what it was like to feel nothing at all. But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t true.

Shepard’s palms on his cheeks, on his throat, on his shoulders, being gentle with his blunt fingernails digging into Kaidan’s sides even as Kaidan rocked against him, casting a long shadow over his body…

That was the in between.

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Kaidan said. He saluted.

His elbow barely creaked.

He’d never get over the wonders of modern medicine, of checkups with volunteer nurses, of a small supply of middle grade pain medication to use at his discretion—like, for example, if his joints started to ache when it rained. He hadn’t understood anything about being an old soldier until he’d found himself on the other side of his war. Knowing the score and accepting it—that was the difference between a young soldier and an old one.

He said his goodbyes to his team, all of them lined up in the courtyard, where local members of the Children’s Agricultural Alliance were working on the community garden. When they hunched over, bent to protect the packeted seeds they were placing in the latest shipment of soil planters, they reminded Kaidan of this krogan he never knew, one who’d done all he could to protect something that wasn’t even his.

‘It’s been an honor leading this squad,’ Kaidan said. ‘But Riviera’s promotion should probably tell you that without me around, your new CO is going to ride you ten times as hard. And… I know you’re up for it. You’ll make the Alliance, the Citadel forces, me—you’ll make us proud.’

‘Aye, aye,’ they said, and saluted.

A couple of the kids by the planters turned to watch. One of them wiped dirt off on her chest before she saluted, too.

Kaidan guessed—in a way—he was going to miss it. The atmosphere. The schedule. The routine he knew and the order he’d worked to keep. He’d think about it every night before he got some shut-eye, the rest a body needed in a suitable docking bay so it could ship out again the next morning. He’d wonder how Riviera was doing, how Delgado was holding up, and where his daughter was these days—if she was already enrolled in piloting school, for example, because it was only a matter of time.

Kaidan shook Riviera’s hand, more than a salute.

‘A real honor,’ Kaidan said.

‘Honor’s all mine,’ Riviera replied.

Kaidan was on a mass shuttle to earth after Hackett pulled some strings—Alliance having top priority when it came to transport, shuttle fuel being limited, and officer travel one of the only things you could get that green light for these days.

There were plenty of people—people like Delgado, even—who had better reasons to pick up and ship out. But they stayed where they were because it was the right thing to do, because their work rebuilding the Citadel was nowhere near done yet.

Kaidan’s work was somewhere else. If he’d stayed, he’d be the guy putting glue in the wrong place, not holding any of the pieces steady while it set.

It was better this way.

Shepard had a fresh start, a clean slate. He’d work things out without having to deal whatever Kaidan was projecting, whatever he was making too obvious—and how he couldn’t separate what’d happened before from what could happen now.

So he had to put a lot of space travel between them.

Mom was waiting for him at the drop site after a long ride, most of the soldiers in Alliance blues sitting at attention even while they dozed off. During the whole trip, they got one round of protein rations and vitamin water to stay hydrated. Kaidan didn’t close his eyes but he still remembered his shuttle to Arcturus Station and, before that, the long trip to Jump Zero. The long trip back from Jump Zero, too. He remembered stepping onto the Normandy for the first time—and again, Shepard inviting him onto the Normandy again, Kaidan finally ready to take that invitation.

The stuff that felt familiar; the stuff that wasn’t. He was just looking to sort it out and try to make sense from the rubble, through an air filtration mask that was standard issue on earth.

They watched the preparation protocol vids in the decontamination room. The officers were separated from the privates who were separated from the trained volunteers. Kaidan was given his station and his acting orders and a salute, a real one, solid and strong.

‘It’s an honor to have you with us,’ the soldier—Williams—told him. ‘Welcome home, Major Alenko. Or…should I call you Spectre?’

‘Major’s fine,’ Kaidan replied. ‘At ease. It’s good to be back.’ Then, after a pause, he added, ‘I used to serve with a Lieutenant Williams. She was an incredible soldier.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Williams told him, already straightening, with the burden and the possibility of that kind of honor.

Kaidan headed out to the kiss and cry, where most of the reunions had gone down already, new arrivals moving out and moving on.

‘Welcome home, Kaidan,’ Mom said, her arms around his shoulders.

Kaidan stayed where he was, Mom patting the back of his head, and he guessed the reason why he couldn’t feel anything was because he hadn’t ever expected he’d be able to. All resources had been channeled to the immediate and the necessary, while the rest—joy and sorrow, relief and regret—were decommissioned for a while. It’d take a lot of promises, a lot of time, to bring them back after they’d served faithfully only to be discharged.

‘You look thin,’ Mom said.

‘It’s really good to see you,’ Kaidan replied.

There was a second hug, as long as the first but not as hard. Then, Kaidan shouldered his standard Alliance issue equipment and the sweaters he had—ones Mom had managed to get through to him for the cold nights—and they said goodbye outside the station. ‘Now that you’re here,’ Mom said, ‘you’re going to have to visit. It might even be nice to be somewhere familiar for a while.’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said.

He didn’t recognize the sky, the smell of smoke in the air, the new roads built and all the missing buildings he was used to seeing on shore leave. Those rare visits back home had been good—even when Mom told him he was looking tired and touched his temple over dinner, smoothing the hair back.

That was when Kaidan realized he was first going gray, only a few flecks, but more and more each year. It was something genetic he’d inherited from Mom—and not because of the exposure, the implants, or any of the choices he’d made.

Mom touched the hair at his temple now and he kissed her forehead. It’d make for a good picture, he thought, pack slung over his back. Coming home at last. A soldier and what was left of his family; a reunion in a docking terminal, a moment that was more peaceful than anything else since the Invasion.

A sanity check, maybe. Two foreheads pressed into one narrow, warm space.

Then, the shuttle slid into view and Kaidan promised he’d visit when he got the chance. When Mom got the chance. ‘Get back safe,’ he said, and then, with his lips twisting, ‘give ‘em hell, Mom.’

‘Every waking minute, Kaidan,’ Mom replied.

Kaidan watched her out the window while he rode with the other shipment of transfers heading toward the Center of City Operations, Vancouver’s CCO. The view wasn’t one Kaidan recognized and he’d done the same drive more times than he’d been off-world.

Parts of the skyline were missing. Replacement pieces weren’t as easy to bring in as a favor from the Shadow Broker. It’d take time, patience, something everyone had, but it wasn’t about the tactics or the assault or even the evasive maneuvers anymore. It was a different home front, holding down a different baseline. 

For some reason, the trip across Vancouver felt longer than the one between earth and the Citadel—even if right now the Citadel felt like it might as well have been whole systems away.

Their new CO Rojas was there to meet them when they disembarked. He had their credentials on file and their bunking assignments already sent to their datapads—and he’d have them running emergency drills the next day at zero six hundred and for the entire week. When he was through with them, they’d know exactly what to do in case of a riot, in case of a structural collapse, in case of fire, in case of flooding, or in case of any other unforeseen and so-called natural disasters that were doing about as much damage as the Reapers had in the first place.

There were four guys to a dorm, beds bunked together. Seniority and rank meant Kaidan could put in a request for a private bunk of his own on a higher level, but he said he’d take what was open, and Rojas told him that was his choice even if it was a piss-poor one.

The snoring in the night kept Kaidan awake for longer than it used to. There was no window and that meant there was no view.

_Landed on earth again,_ Kaidan wrote to Liara. _For some reason, the trip felt shorter than I remember it. I wonder why that is._

_I heard some excerpts from the speech you gave on possible uses of prothean and reaper technology in the coming years. Sorry I wasn’t there to see it in person. It sounded great._

_It’s not too bad down here. We’re making a real difference. Maybe it’s slow going, but in ten years, everybody’s bound to look back and wonder how we did it._

_See you someday,_

_Major K. Alenko_

‘Writing to somebody special, huh?’ one of the guys asked, fresh from the shower.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied. He reached for his towel and headed off; he didn’t think about the hot showers he’d taken once, lasting long enough that his skin flushed from his chest to his knees. His body kept Shepard pressed against the tiles until the sound of the running water drowned out everything else; they didn’t have to think about the galaxy, just how Kaidan hadn’t shaved yet, and Shepard probably wouldn’t shave later. Their lips were swollen with stubble burn and Shepard’s fingers were warm between the hot water and Kaidan’s hot back.

Kaidan’s palms on Shepard’s shoulders, rubbing soap into his chest, touching a scar on his stomach between his navel and his hip.

Whispering _stubborn_ and _Shepard_ and Shepard’s voice echoing through the spray, _Kaidan_ , one of the perks of being commander and getting your own private shower to do whatever you wanted in.

Feeling clean after. Damp skin dried off before hitting the sheets.

The back of Kaidan’s neck was the only thing still wet after his water allotment meter ran down to empty and started beeping. He wiped that strip of skin dry with his palm and caught up on the news before he drifted off to the sound of somebody else snoring—not Shepard.

Training left him tired out. Rations at the station were the same as they were on the Citadel, never enough. Liara told him Shepard was doing well and she was glad to hear the same about Kaidan, that the tech talks seemed as though they’d last until the next Reaper invasion, that she was off the Citadel now, and that she hoped he said hello to his mother for her.

_Human custom. She must be an incredible woman, if she’s anything like her son._

_Be well, Major._

_Postscript: I sent the Commander another ship to work on. A simple Kodiak Shuttle to go with the Normandy replica. No one else was bidding on it, so I figured why not? Let me know if you ever want to take up a hobby. I’d say you could be a collector, but I’m afraid it might be too soon. Besides, they’ve asked all holo-cards be donated to be reprocessed as building materials. Imagine that._

Kaidan didn’t have to imagine it. He already knew.

*


	19. XIX

The shuttle came a week and a half later, but there was no way of knowing when it had actually arrived. Mail distribution was twice a month and Kaidan hadn’t been expecting anything, no packages from home or provisions or even contraband proteins from Mom. She’d work her way up to it eventually; for now, Kaidan could only imagine she was stockpiling them, calling in a few old favors, that kind of thing.

Shepard was getting better at making those ships, even if a shuttle didn’t have as many parts as a model Normandy. There was a data port in the box with it and when Kaidan plugged it into his omnitool, he got the message.

_Just make sure she has a nice place to land. Shepard_

A nice place didn’t always have to be a soft place. Kaidan rubbed the shadows off his face and set the shuttle on the shelf above his bunk, where he’d always be able to see it.

Then, he headed off to training, where he was putting a small group of biotics through drills—not an official school, not yet, but Alliance was already starting to build some impetus toward making it official. They had more on their mind than specialized instruction centers, but squads of well-trained biotics were helping with the relocation of Reaper technology. Any day now, HQ was going to give them the green light—and up their rations to include a protein and a half more daily.

Any day now.

Kaidan watched the kids—some of them older than he was when he’d headed to brain camp, most of them about the same age and a few of them even younger—go through their paces, knowing nothing he did in the observation gym was going to prepare them for what they’d have to face some day. He just had to give them the pieces, the right tools, and hope they could put it all together when the time came.

He was sweating at the end of it, practical demonstrations with the top of the class to lead by example, not by barking orders from the deck. The air conditioning units were off for the day—and Kaidan remembered Hackett’s chief complaint, how much he would’ve hated it down there.

Not enough juice. They drank their vitamin waters and Kaidan wiped the sweat off the gray hair at his temples.

‘Well, that’s a start,’ he said. ‘There are gonna be all kinds of tough conditions out there you’re gonna have to work through just like this. You’re not always going to be operating with the air conditioning on full blast and sometimes, yeah, it’s gonna feel like a fever. But you know what you do with that? You sweat it out. All you’ve gotta do is find a place inside where none of it touches you. Build a kinetic shield. Keep it on lockdown. You know, we could all stand to learn a thing or two about how to take the heat.’

‘Yes, sir,’ they echoed, a group of faces Kaidan was still putting names to, but he’d always been good at keeping those straight. Hadn’t called a team member the wrong thing by accident yet.

‘Class dismissed,’ Kaidan said. ‘Get some rest. Store up that energy. Tomorrow we’re training in the field, not down here, so whatever conditions we just went through, however hard you thought that was… Out there, it’s gonna be worse.’

They filed into the changing rooms and Kaidan sat on a bench in the observation deck, the old prep school building with the track around the top for physical exercises. He drank the last of his vitamin water, lips dry, and leaned back against the wall.

He was just gonna close his eyes, blink the sweat out of them, before marking up evaluations on the kids. How they’d done, if they were holding up under the pressure, and how long it’d be before they could move past the training stage.

The only way to know when you’d fallen asleep was when you woke up after. Kaidan didn’t have crazy dreams or the sense while he was dreaming that it was only a dream. He must’ve been tired because the hand on his shoulder startled him, like Mom before an early morning, or the shift in the mattress as Shepard was inching his way out of bed, quiet enough that nobody else would’ve noticed.

Nobody except for Kaidan.

‘You look tired, soldier,’ Shepard said.

That was supposed to be Kaidan’s line. _You look tired, soldier_ , he’d say, Shepard moving the food on his plate in the mess around with his fork, what Kaidan only realized now was a strategy designed to wait and see if Kaidan was still hungry once he’d finished his meal. _Planning on turning in soon,_ Shepard would reply, a spark coming to life like a live-wire in his eyes, _but I don’t know if I’m planning on doing much sleeping once I get there._

 _You look tired, soldier,_ Kaidan would say later, both of them sitting on the edge of the bed, Shepard’s temple resting on Kaidan’s shoulder before he turned his face against Kaidan’s throat, nose pushed against his pulse, lips against the fabric of Kaidan’s collar.

At least until Kaidan undid it and pushed it aside, cupping Shepard’s cheek, thumbing over dark stubble that might’ve been what a shadow really felt like. Nothing smooth at all, just enough to burn the skin.

Kaidan opened his eyes.

He didn’t have the requisite waiting period between the moment his eyes focused and the one when his brain processed what those eyes were seeing. They’d trained that out of him early, prepared him to regain consciousness in unfamiliar situations and ask only the necessary questions first. It didn’t have to make sense. Survival was what mattered—and usually, survival didn’t make any sense at all.

‘Shepard?’ Kaidan asked.

Maybe he wasn’t as good as he’d thought at only asking the necessary questions. Maybe he’d sweated the training out, damp at the small of his back; he could feel his hair curling over his forehead, the shadow that fell across it, no room to push it off.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard replied.

Kaidan cleared his throat, stuck like an old airlock on an abandoned colony site. It’d open eventually—but it might not be pretty what it let out. ‘…If you’re here for the practical demonstration test,’ Kaidan finally said, ‘you’re about five days too early.’

‘Maybe I didn’t want to be late.’ Shepard was too close for Kaidan to see him properly. The big things needed to be far away in order to get perspective on them—which was exactly why Kaidan had left the Citadel in the first place. Shepard was big; he was too damn big. ‘…It’s good to see you, Major.’

Kaidan cleared his throat again. ‘I should be saluting the galactic hero,’ he said, sitting up but only halfway.

‘It’d be great if you didn’t,’ Shepard replied. ‘Not that I can order you not to, but I’d appreciate it.’

‘Okay.’ Kaidan took a deep breath, pulling everything the airlock had lost back inside, trying to find the balance. How much was too much? Did anybody ever figure that out? ‘…Okay. Good to see you too, Commander. Welcome back to earth—welcome to Vancouver. You might not believe it now, but it used to be a lot prettier.’

‘Actually, I came in with the shuttle,’ Shepard said. ‘The one I sent you.’

‘So long as you didn’t come in _on_ the shuttle.’ Kaidan blinked, wondering when the last time he’d made a bad joke was. And, to make it even worse, Shepard actually chuckled. ‘Hey… Don’t encourage me. I might get the idea that kind of line makes up for its faults—which I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.’

‘I’m not exactly the best judge of that, myself,’ Shepard admitted. ‘Some people—I’m not going to name names, but they’re a turian with a sense of humor and an impressive-looking scar and their last name rhymes with shakarian—have even suggested I might even be goofy.’

Kaidan almost laughed, Shepard’s mouth so close to his that he could smell the vitamin water on both of their breath. When Shepard spoke, his lips moved just enough for Kaidan to follow each swell. ‘I’m having a hard time picturing Garrus saying goofy, Commander,’ he said.

‘Fine, fine—maybe his words were a little less-kid friendly.’ Shepard’s voice always got warm when he was talking about Garrus. ‘But I heard this is some kind of training zone, and I’ve got to make a good impression on the kids, right? Set an example, unlike the turian I’m still not naming whose first name rhymes with Paris.’

‘Paris Shakarian,’ Kaidan said. ‘Sounds like an asari pop star from Omega.’

‘Now that’s a calling,’ Shepard replied. ‘It’s not like Garrus to miss his mark. …Or take a missile to the face, either.’

‘Crazier things have happened,’ Kaidan said.

  
  
art by STONELIONS

Crazier things would happen. Crazy was only relative—although anyone would’ve agreed with Kaidan that crazy was the second Shepard leaned closer, the second their noses bumped together, the second their foreheads followed, Shepard’s skin resting against Kaidan’s messy hair. It must’ve tickled because all the air left Shepard’s body, and then he was kissing Kaidan on the mouth, full and straightforward like their first time, without any of the angles Kaidan had managed to get him to consider night after night, kiss after kiss, tongue running along his teeth and teasing his bottom lip.

  
  
art by STONELIONS

This kiss wasn’t like that. It had stubble but mostly Kaidan’s stubble, Shepard smelling like antibacterial ointment of some kind, while Kaidan just smelled like training room workouts.

Forehead to forehead, wrinkles to scars. The blunt kiss didn’t have any help from either of them and it ended almost as soon as it’d begun, but after that Shepard tried—clumsy, still too direct to be any good—to kiss after the corner of Kaidan’s mouth where the stubble was darkest.

Kaidan was breathing harder than he had been during his demonstration with one of his older students, Yang; she’d almost given him a run for his credits, but the whole point was to show them what it meant to rally after you were so tired your muscles were screaming, your heart racing, your pulse cutting in and out like a bad reception.

That was when it counted. To keep your head, to stay calm, to gather your reserves and fight back after letting the hostiles tire themselves out.

Shepard’s clumsy little kisses, all of them gathered across Kaidan’s lips.

Kaidan rallied. His body knew the way just like his hands knew Shepard’s body and wanted, or needed, to touch it, from stomach to chest to shoulders, squeezing and testing, checking for scars beneath the fabric of his blues. There were a few. Shepard was a soldier and he didn’t wince; Kaidan was a soldier but he knew how to be gentle. It just wasn’t coming to him, raking his hands through Shepard’s hair until it stuck up in the back, kisses as clumsy as Shepard’s but deeper, deeper.

Kaidan’s hands were definitely the ones shaking now—not enough protein, not enough calories, too much exercise; not enough Shepard and too much Shepard at the same time, just like Kaidan moving in closer and pulling away, wanting to kiss someone he couldn’t keep.

Finally, he let them rest, breathing each other’s air, not a closed system no matter how much it felt like one.

  
  
art by STONELIONS

‘Damn,’ Shepard said. He coughed, trying to clear his throat. ‘…All right, maybe they shouldn’t look to me for this role model business.’

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

Shepard twitched like it was a reflex test, like his meds weren’t agreeing with him. Then, he was still again, back straight, hands on Kaidan’s sides but not exactly holding on tight. It was more like they were trying to find their regulation zoning areas on Kaidan’s body—even though they were already cleared to land wherever they liked.

‘You’ve been calling me Commander so often, I almost didn’t recognize my own name,’ Shepard replied.

He sounded like he did whenever he’d been kissing. Winded, which he never was in the field, and unsteady, which hadn’t even been him in an intensive care unit during weeks of painful PT.

‘In times like these, protocol can be the only thing separating us from chaos,’ Kaidan said. ‘…And if that sounds like something Hackett would say, that’s probably because it _is_ something Hackett’s already said.’

He pulled Shepard down for another kiss and Shepard followed, mouth opening up quicker this time, easier. Kaidan remembered that about him: how fast he was to learn something, how he was even faster when it came to relearning it.

‘Anybody ever tell you how good you are at that?’ Shepard asked.

 _Anybody ever tell you how good you are at that?_ Shepard had already asked. The echo thumped in Kaidan’s chest cavity—or maybe that was just the sound his heart made now.

‘You’re… You’re not the first one to say that, actually.’ Kaidan soothed the hair he’d pushed the wrong way back down, wondering if Shepard was going to buzz it again someday. Kaidan always liked the way it felt under his palms, against his fingers, prickling both ways instead of just one.

‘Should I be jealous?’ Shepard asked.

‘Maybe,’ Kaidan replied. ‘It was… It was pretty serious. But he’s not a part of the picture anymore, and that’s… I’ve accepted it.’

‘Okay.’ Shepard’s knee bumped Kaidan’s thigh. At least it was his good one. ‘Okay, I can accept that, too. Might keep me up at night for a while, but then again, what doesn’t?’

‘It’s over,’ Kaidan said.

But in a way, it was just beginning.

‘You wanna go for a walk, Shepard?’ Kaidan added. ‘I think I need to get out of here. I think I need to clear my head.’

‘I thought you’d never ask, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied.

*


	20. XX

The city used to be bright twenty-four seven but now, Kaidan needed his flashlight to navigate. Shepard had a pair of sunglasses he didn’t need to use in the darkness—not for adjusting to the UV rays or for keeping his face hidden. Still, Kaidan wanted to see what he looked like in them. Three parts goofy to one part handsome: the usual Shepard blend.

It was crazy, yeah, but he was an Alliance officer who’d lived through the Reaper Invasion. He’d seen crazier and all the different kinds of crazy—some too big and too loud to process, others too subtle to understand.

It was all about perspective.

Kaidan switched on his omni-tool flashlight, one straight beam along the ground in front of them. A second later, Shepard’s light joined his, making the beam wider.

‘Where to?’ Shepard asked. ‘You’re the Vancouver expert here, not me.’

‘You’re just lucky it’s not raining,’ Kaidan replied. ‘A lot of the time, it’s raining.’

In fact, over the lingering smell of sulfur and ozone, burnt rubber and concrete dust that clogged their throats, the air was starting to get heavy and wet. Always the humidity, Kaidan thought, one of a thousand mundane thoughts he had every minute, set against the chaos of a city being rebuilt and a heart trying to do the same.

It wasn’t raining yet, but it was gonna be soon. At least there was something to rely on.

‘I don’t know,’ Kaidan admitted. ‘Where to go, I mean. The whole place is different from the city I grew up in. Even if it hadn’t been mostly destroyed by the Reapers, it would’ve been different.’

‘Would you have taken me here?’ Shepard asked. His voice had color in it, red cheeks, hot ears. That was the galaxy’s number one hero for you. The twist in Kaidan’s stomach was like an omni-blade sinking in deep, sharper than your average live rounds. ‘You know, I might not mind having a Reaper to go up against right about now. Think Vancouver has any left over?’

‘Yeah, Shepard,’ Kaidan said. ‘I would’ve taken you here.’

There was no amount of time, no amount of distance, that’d make that easier to sink in. Kaidan started walking and Shepard kept pace, since moving was the only real cure for thinking.

‘That Cerberus graybox,’ Kaidan added. ‘Crazy stuff, right?’

‘Heard they put me back together the first time,’ Shepard said. ‘Sometimes I don’t know what’s crazier.’

‘They did one good thing against a thousand bad ones, and still I’m willing to take it.’ Kaidan knew that most of the old streets were blocked off at night; the only course to take was the one straight ahead. ‘I’d ask for things the way they were all over again, even, or fight like hell just to…’

_Just to see you again._

Shepard cleared his throat, like he always did before giving a long speech. Then, he didn’t say anything.

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard replied. ‘…Hey, you know, I like that a lot better than commander. I had to keep telling myself you just probably didn’t go for scars, but I’m not sure how well it stuck.’

On the other hand, the stuff Kaidan had been telling himself might’ve stuck too well. It was always one way too far in the wrong direction—or, depending on how you looked at it, too far in the right one. ‘You saved the galaxy, Shepard. I figured the least I could do was give you some space.’

‘I think I’ve had about enough of space to last me for a while,’ Shepard said. ‘Problem is… There’s just so much of it.’

When the rain started falling—something more than sweat on Kaidan’s face, a few chilly droplets turning into a fine mist—Kaidan turned his omni-tool light toward some cover.

‘Can’t be good for us to get that all over our skin,’ Kaidan said, wiping rainwater and dust off his cheek, feeling it streaking, gritty, under his eye. ‘We’ve got no idea what kind of stuff’s clogging up the atmosphere right now.’

‘Good to feel it, though,’ Shepard replied. ‘Good to be able to feel it.’

Eventually, however long you spent on a single project, you had to trust that the glue would hold without your hands there to keep it in place. All the pieces coming together, one or two that might not be perfect, but the whole final product more or less finding a recognizable shape. Something you were proud of. Something you could name.

It was gonna be what it was. They could only work with the parts they’d been given—and whatever else they salvaged along the way.

‘Hey,’ Shepard said, quiet over the patter of rain falling on uneven ground. Kaidan shifted, turning them so that Shepard was closer to the wall, so that it was Kaidan’s back catching most of the ricochet off the street. It was the least he could do—but Shepard wasn’t the kind of guy who let another soldier shield him forever. ‘I’d say I’m glad to see you, Kaidan, but I can’t see too much of anything.’

Kaidan searched for him in the darkness, the light too far from their bodies to show Kaidan what he was reaching for. His fingers pushed across the empty, humid space between them, half expecting to land on nothing at all, or go straight through to the wall behind. Like Shepard was a ghost—or like Kaidan was the ghost—or like they were only two beams of light crossing paths in the nighttime.

Then, his fingertips brushed Shepard’s shoulder, the heel of his palm landing on Shepard’s bicep. Kaidan followed the muscle to the natural swell, to the rolled-up sleeves at his elbow, around the inside and to his ribcage. Starched fabric over his chest; buttons at the collar; the cool metal of the Alliance insignia; the raised shape of three small stars. Kaidan ran his thumb around each point, spreading his fingers along Shepard’s ribs, inching his touch down step by step while fabric bunched under his lifelines. He felt Shepard breathing, in and out and in, the swell of his stomach and how it deflated after.

But breathing. Still breathing.

The body held each breath but Kaidan held the body, testing where everything began and where everything ended, or stopped, or jointed into something new. Shepard’s hips, his belly, the line drawn up the center to his throat—the collar, and where the collar opened, and where his Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed, Kaidan thumbing across stubble, thumbing across the pulse, and finally cupping Shepard’s jaw.

Shepard’s breath—breathing, still breathing—caught in his throat, a man going down on the field, no time to turn back. Kaidan’s fingertips curved behind Shepard’s ear and rubbed his scalp back and forth, back and forth, until the shivering turned into something else, a rhythm like the rain falling on Vancouver.

It’d roll out with about as little warning as it’d rolled in and Kaidan rolled Shepard’s collar down with no warning at all.

A scar on the side of his neck, small and thin but unmistakable. Kaidan rested his forefinger against it, learning the shape, the length, the texture.

‘I don’t mind scars,’ he said, hoarse. ‘I’ve got a few of my own. You get used to them.’

When he kissed Shepard, their chests bumping, two pools of orange light sliding into one at their feet—the same way binary stars eventually, after too much time circling each other, gave in to the force of mutual gravity, matter neither created nor destroyed but relocated for a while—Shepard’s mouth opened under his.

_Glad to see you too, Shepard._

Shepard’s fingers, so good at fitting all the wings and the thrusters and the fuselages, the side-paneling and the paintjob, together—so good at saving the galaxy, one lost cause at a time—skimmed Kaidan’s cheek, his stubble, his pulse. They didn’t land anywhere, like they were still asking permission, like Shepard thought he needed clearance..

Kaidan ran his tongue over Shepard’s bottom lip. There weren’t any scars there; Shepard’s jaw was still tight but it eased, Kaidan between his legs to brace them both against the wall.

He could do it. He could hold them both up, however long it’d take. When Shepard’s knee was giving him trouble; when all the conferences left him tired and he was too Alliance-bred to show it, to think he needed to. Kaidan would know and he’d be the one to remind Shepard of where his body started and where it ended, what he had to do and when he should stop—at least for the night.

Kaidan hadn’t ever expected anything more. Not from a guy like Shepard.

‘Hey, Shepard,’ Kaidan said into Shepard’s mouth.

Shepard caught his breath—landing on his feet, as always, and the first member of the team to dive for the frag grenade. ‘Hey, Kaidan.’

‘If you’re still up for that movie…’ When Kaidan licked his lips he ended up licking Shepard’s lips, too. ‘I don’t know what’s playing and I’m pretty sure the two major cineplexes were converted into refugee housing facilities, but my mom might have some old vids…’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Shepard said. ‘…Or a date. I won’t even bring a beta team along, how about that?’

Kaidan laughed, stupid, crumbling, gripping the front of Shepard’s shirt and bowing his head against his shoulder, kissing his throat. He had to be on the pulse; he had to feel it beating. He had to kiss it until he was the one who was breathless, and trembling, and hard in his fatigues—and realizing, relief as hot as arousal, that Shepard was hard too.

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said. Now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop— _Shepard,_ over and over again on Shepard’s skin, muffled, warm, damp, sweat and rain and Kaidan’s tears and the circle of Shepard’s arms. An arc of orange light swept around them like the lines drawn for a kinetic barrier. It kept some things in and kept other things out.

It took a while, but the rain stopped. And Kaidan stopped, easing back into the rhythm of holding it together, in and out with Shepard’s pulse. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘All clear now. We’re… We’re good.’

‘Yeah.’ Shepard touched the small of Kaidan’s back, not letting him pull away. ‘Okay, Kaidan.’

‘I’m just glad to see you, Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

‘I’m glad to see you too, Kaidan,’ Shepard replied.

His palms smelled like they always did—flinty, scorched, with metallic undertones. Like sweat and steel and burnt skin. Like round after round fired into wave after wave, and breath after breath, and kiss after kiss.

Shepard held Kaidan’s head in both hands like he didn’t know how to hold anything. But he did know; Kaidan had seen him with those model ships, careful and precise, never shaking. His thumbs rested at the corners of Kaidan’s mouth. He tilted Kaidan’s face up and the kiss was long, slow, not too deep. It was a Shepard kind of kiss, no tongue and private, generous, even sweet.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now that’s more like it.’

‘Are you sure about this, Shepard?’ Kaidan asked. He was too tired to brace himself for the answer he didn’t want to hear, leaning against the body he wanted to hold up.

‘I was sure about this three years ago.’ Shepard’s mouth tickled the gray hair at Kaidan’s temple, lips making the hair shiver.

‘I wasn’t,’ Kaidan said. ‘But Shepard… I am now.’

He stood where he was for a while longer, the rain coming down, his stomach pressed to Shepard’s stomach and bumping when they breathed—out of sync, but it didn’t matter. The rain slowed. Kaidan had no idea how much time had passed, only that the flashlight apps had long since gone into sleep mode, that his cheek was damp against Shepard’s cheek. That, maybe, both of them had been crying.

Either that, or the rain had been coming down heavier than Kaidan thought.

That was Vancouver for you.

They turned their lights back on, running parallel to lead the way together, and when Kaidan’s beam crossed the seat of a bench, they sat without asking each other if it was all right or if that was what they wanted.

It felt good to take the weight off.

‘Feels good to take the weight off,’ Kaidan said.

‘You were the one keeping up with a squad of rookies,’ Shepard replied. ‘They might not have finesse, but they make up for it with energy. I don’t envy you that position.’

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said. ‘We were those rookies once, you know.’

He searched for Shepard’s hand again—not an accident, not a miscalculation, but a choice. When his fingers found Shepard’s knuckles they stayed there, the bench wet beneath but worth it to sit there for as long as they needed. Thinking, instead of moving. Or just being, which was something all the Alliance training in the galaxy hadn’t prepared them for.

‘We can take it slow, Shepard,’ Kaidan said finally, the sun starting to rise over the dirty water. Their flashlight apps had gone off again and, for the next ten hours, they wouldn’t need them. Kaidan’s slotted his fingers between Shepard’s and there was something holding it all together that wasn’t about what they were. It was more about what they could be, the little ships they’d build together.

‘I don’t know what slow is, Kaidan,’ Shepard admitted.

‘That’s fine,’ Kaidan replied. ‘’Cause I happen to know a lot about waiting.’ 

**END**


End file.
